Politics Live

Defence spending has become a key political battleground in recent weeks, and it came up again today when the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave a heavily-trailed speech at the Policy Exchange think tank.

In the speech itself, Mr Sunak said: “We’ve proudly taken the generational decision to increase defence spending to a new baseline of 2.5% of GDP by 2030. Yet Labour have refused to match our pledge.”

And in the Q&A that followed the speech, Mr Sunak said: “We’ve made the decision to increase defence spending to 2.5%... Keir Starmer and the Labour party have been crystal clear that they don't believe in that. They will not match that choice.”

So what exactly have the Conservatives and Labour pledged on defence?

Last month the government announced that it would increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030.

At the time, the government—including Mr Sunak—claimed this represents £75 billion in additional defence spending. We’ve explained previously that this figure is misleading.

By comparison, the Labour party has said it is also committed to increasing spending to 2.5% of GDP. But unlike the government, it has not set out a specific timescale to meet this target, and instead says only that it will raise spending to 2.5% of GDP “as soon as resources allow”.

In response to the government’s announcement last month, shadow defence secretary John Healey MP said Labour would support a plan that was “fully costed and fully funded, and set out in the government’s baseline budgets”.

The government’s defence spending pledge has been questioned by a number of think tanks, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Institute for Government and Chatham House saying the government has not adequately explained how it will be funded.

During an interview on Good Morning Britain today, Conservative MP and former immigration minister Robert Jenrick said his “personal record” was “instituting the biggest reduction in net migration of all time”.

He added: “I persuaded the Prime Minister to put in place measures that will reduce the number of people coming into this country by 300,000.”

Mr Jenrick’s comments refer to a series of measures announced in December last year. The government has estimated that had these measures been in place, together with previously announced restrictions on international students bringing dependants, around 300,000 people who came to the UK in the year to September 2023 would not have been able to come.

It’s important to note though that these are government estimates of what the impact of the new measures might be. A 300,000 fall in net migration would likely represent a record reduction, in recent years at least, but clearly the actual impact of the measures may be different, and we don’t yet know that they will result in “the biggest reduction in net migration of all time”.

The measures announced in December include:

• stopping overseas care workers from bringing family dependants and requiring care providers to register with the Care Quality Commission if they are sponsoring migrants
• increasing the skilled workers visa earning threshold from £26,200 to £38,700
• increasing the minimum income requirement threshold in stages for family visas
• reforming the Shortage Occupation List and ending the 20% going rate salary discount for shortage occupations.

The government’s detailed estimates for the impact of each measure can be found here. While the eventual impact of these measures is yet to be seen, last week the government said the number of people applying for skilled worker, health and care and study visas in the first three months of 2024 was down by 24% on the same period last year.

Meanwhile, provisional figures show that estimated net migration did fall during Mr Jenrick’s time as immigration minister, but not by a record amount.

At Prime Minister’s Questions today, Rishi Sunak claimed the government has “overseen a fall in poverty, but particularly child poverty, since 2010”.

As we’ve explained before, there are different ways of measuring poverty. There has been a fall in child poverty according to one measure at least, but other measures show a different picture.

When politicians talk about poverty statistics, they’re often referring to figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions on relative low income and absolute low income:

• Relative low income measures the number of people in households where the income is below 60% of the national median average that year.
• Absolute low income measures the number of people in households where the income is below 60% of the average median level in 2010/11, adjusted for inflation.

The latest data shows the number of children in absolute poverty after housing costs fell from 3.7 million in 2009/10 to 3.6 million in 2022/23. 

But the equivalent figure before housing costs shows an increase since 2009/10, from 2.5 million to 2.6 million. 

The number of children in relative poverty after housing costs has increased since 2009/10, from 3.9 million to 4.3 million.

It’s also increased before housing costs, from 2.6 million to 3.2 million in 2022/23. 

As well as looking at the numerical total of children, there is also data on the proportion of children in low income households.

The proportion of children living in relative poverty has increased from 20% in 2009/10 (before housing costs) to 22% in 2022/23, and from 29% (after housing costs) to 30% over the same period. 

The proportion of children in absolute poverty before housing costs was 19% in 2009/10 and this fell to 18% in 2022/23. After housing costs are taken into account, it’s fallen from 28% to 25%. 

Following reports earlier this week that a failed asylum seeker has been sent from the UK to Rwanda, an article published online by the Daily Express has repeatedly described the removal as a “deportation”.

A similar claim was also made in Parliament on Wednesday by Conservative deputy chair Jonathan Gullis MP, who, referring to Rwanda, said “we have now deported our first illegal migrant”.

This isn’t technically correct, according to the official definition of ‘deportation’ at least. As we explained in a fact check earlier this year, the Home Office describes deportations as “a legally defined subset of returns, which are enforced either following a criminal conviction, or when it is judged that a person’s removal from the UK is beneficial to the public good”.

The case being reported this week involved a different type of return, called a “voluntary” removal (where someone liable to be returned leaves the UK of their own accord, either with or without support from the Home Office).

It’s worth noting though that the term ‘deportation’ has sometimes been used more loosely when talking about returns in general. For example, the Migration Observatory says “in general usage, deportation refers to the removal of a foreign citizen from a country’s territory”, while in March the Prime Minister appeared to use the term without being clear that the figure he was referring to covered both enforced and voluntary returns.

It was reported by The Times and the BBC in March that the government had begun offering some failed asylum seekers £3,000 to voluntarily leave the UK for Rwanda.

This is separate to the Rwanda removals scheme announced by the government in 2022, which would involve asylum seekers whose claims are deemed inadmissible in the UK being sent to Rwanda, where their claims would be processed. The Home Office has this week announced that it has begun detaining asylum seekers who have been identified for relocation under this scheme, after the government’s Safety of Rwanda Bill passed into law last week.

We contacted the Daily Express and Mr Gullis for comment but did not receive a response.

Tomorrow, 2 May 2024, sees elections for councillors and mayors taking place across parts of England, and for Police and Crime Commissioners in England and Wales. 

In recent days we’ve been looking into a number of claims related to these elections, as well as making sure voters have access to accurate, relevant information on how the elections themselves work. 

This includes our investigation which revealed council websites were giving voters in England and Wales out-of-date information on the electoral system used in the elections. Full Fact’s intervention has ensured these websites have been updated, so they now correctly refer to ‘First Past the Post’, the system which will be used tomorrow. 

And yesterday we published an explainer on the rules about voter ID, after seeing a number of misleading claims about the new rules, as well as reports from the Electoral Commission that in last May’s local elections about 14,000 people who went to a polling station were unable to vote, as they didn’t have the right ID.

We’ve also fact checked claims from politicians standing in one of the biggest contests tomorrow, for Mayor of London.

This includes a claim from the Conservatives that the current Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, is planning to introduce a pay-per-mile scheme for motorists in the capital. (Mr Khan has ruled out introducing a pay-per-mile scheme, though the Conservatives have argued this pledge can’t be trusted and Mr Khan has previously spoken of the potential for introducing such a scheme in the future.)

Last week we also fact checked three claims from BBC London’s live mayoral debate—this included looking at whether it’s true that Transport for London fares have been “frozen”, and whether “ordinary Londoners” can afford to live in the city. And today we’ve investigated claims from Labour that Conservative candidate Susan Hall plans to “cancel” universal free school meals in the capital. 

We’ve heard another repeat of Labour’s claim that there’ve been 25 tax rises since 2019. 

In a video posted on X (formerly Twitter), shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves referenced “25 Tory tax rises”.

Ms Reeves and other Labour politicians, including Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and members of the shadow Treasury team, have made similar claims in recent months. 

As we’ve explained before, it’s not clear how Labour arrived at this figure and they’ve not published their workings. 

Full Fact was sent what appeared to be the list of 25 tax rises by shadow Treasury minister Lord Livermore back in January. It includes a range of tax rises that have been introduced since 2019, but omits others, such as the windfall tax. 

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) told us there have likely been hundreds of tax rises (and reductions) since 2019, and simply counting the number of tax rises “isn’t very interesting or meaningful”. 

The IFS said a better way of measuring tax rises is to look at the total amount of tax raised, and by this metric, this Parliament is “the biggest tax-raising Parliament in modern times”. 

After the Prime Minister suggested earlier today that Labour peers were delaying the government’s Rwanda bill, we’ve seen claims in response from a Labour MP and a journalist that there is a “Tory majority” in the House of Lords.

This isn’t correct. No party has an overall majority in the House of Lords. 

The Conservatives are the largest party in the Lords, with 277 peers, followed by 182 crossbench peers (not affiliated to a party), and 172 are Labour peers.

The remainder are either members of smaller parties or sit as independents.

We fact checked an opposite version of this claim made by defence minister Grant Shapps earlier this year.

Last night MPs in the Commons voted to give a second reading to the Tobacco and Vapes Bill—legislation that will ban tobacco products from being sold to people born on or after 1 January 2009.

Following the vote, Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting MP claimed “it was only thanks to Labour MPs that this bill passed”.

Mr Streeting appears to have been referring to the fact that had the 160 Labour MPs who voted in favour of the bill instead voted against it, all other things being equal the bill would not have passed.

However, as others have noted, had Labour MPs abstained—another way they could have withheld support—the bill would still have been passed. More Conservative MPs voted for the bill than voted against it, and more MPs who are not Conservative or Labour voted for the bill than voted against it, too.

In all, 178 Conservative MPs voted for the bill, as well as 160 Labour MPs, 31 SNP MPs, five Liberal Democrat MPs and six MPs from other parties or who sit as independents.

57 Conservative MPs voted against the bill, alongside nine MPs from other parties.

A total of 195 MPs (excluding the Speaker and Deputy Speakers, who do not vote on legislation) did not vote on the bill, including 106 Conservative MPs and 40 Labour MPs.

For more on how MPs’ votes are counted (including why there are some slight discrepancies in some tallies), see this page on the Parliament website.

Speaking about the government’s Safety of Rwanda Bill on Sky News this morning, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott MP said: “We will be ready for flights to take off in the spring, when the legislation passes.”

Asked what this meant in terms of dates, Ms Trott replied: “Well there’s lots of definitions of spring, but we’re hoping to get them up and running as quickly as possible.”

According to the Met Office there are two definitions of spring: astronomical and meteorological. The first refers to the position of earth’s orbit in relation to the sun. This year astronomical spring runs from Wednesday 20 March to Thursday 20 June.

Meteorological seasons are set according to the calendar, and each lasts three months. By this measure, spring always begins on 1 March and ends on 31 May. 

In order to fit with one of these definitions of spring, therefore, Rwanda flights would have to take off no later than 20 June. 

Meanwhile the website of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich says the start of spring can also be calculated using phenology—the study of seasonal changes in plants and animals.

It states: “In reality there are no hard and fast criteria to determine the start of each season; the onset of spring, for instance, could be the date on which the first daffodil flowers or the first birds make their nests. The dates of these are not only extremely difficult to determine but also vary quite dramatically through the United Kingdom, let alone the rest of the world.”

A spokesperson for the Home Office declined to comment on the timing of spring but said: “We have robust operational plans in place to get flights off the ground to Rwanda.”

We’ve looked at another claim from today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer told The Sun he would put taxes up.

Mr Sunak said: “A few weeks ago he finally admitted it to The Sun. What would he say he would do? I quote, he said ‘we would put up taxes’.”

While it’s true Mr Starmer did say Labour would increase taxes during a video interview with The Sun last month, Mr Sunak’s comment is missing context. In fact, Mr Starmer specified in the interview that Labour would raise taxes in relation to certain “loopholes”, and went on to say his party didn’t want tax increases for working people. 

Sir Keir said: “We are going to put up taxes, we’ve already said that, in relation to VAT on private schools, non-dom tax status, some of the loopholes that we’ve identified.” He continued: “We’ve argued that National Insurance shouldn’t go up. We do not want to see increases in tax for working people, we think they’ve been overly burdened already.”