Politics Live

The work and pensions secretary Mel Stride told Parliament on Monday that “one in four cancers are caused by smoking”. As we wrote in a fact check about Steve Barclay last week, this isn’t quite right. 

It’s estimated smoking causes about a quarter of all cancer deaths, but around 15% of cancer cases.

We wrote to Mr Barclay’s office, who told us he meant to say “cancer deaths”. We’ve now written to Mr Stride as well.

The news earlier today that inflation has fallen to 4.6% from its peak of over 11% last year has prompted a number of claims from senior Conservative politicians, who have compared the impact with that of a tax cut.

Former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi MP said on X that “getting inflation down is a big tax cut”. Lee Anderson MP, deputy chair of the Conservative party, described inflation as “a tax on people’s pockets”, while at Prime Minister’s Questions earlier today, Rishi Sunak said halving inflation is “the most effective tax cut we could have delivered to the British people this year”.

We looked at a similar claim from the Prime Minister last month. As we wrote then, it is clearly not technically true that inflation is a tax or a reduction in inflation is a tax cut. Taxes are money paid to the state to fund public services, whereas inflation is an increase in the price of goods and services.

However it is true that both taxes and inflation can affect people’s disposable income, so Mr Sunak and others appear to be arguing that, in that respect, a reduction in tax and a reduction in inflation will have a similar impact on people’s personal finances.

At Prime Minister’s Questions just now, Rishi Sunak claimed Labour’s immigration plan involves “a cosy deal with the EU which would see the UK accept 100,000 illegal migrants”.

As we’ve previously explained, this figure is a Conservative party estimate which is not reliable.

The estimate makes a number of assumptions about a potential future returns deal with the EU, and appears to misinterpret a recent EU agreement on relocating some asylum seekers across the bloc.

In September Sir Keir Starmer said he would ultimately seek a returns deal with the EU if elected, but Labour has said it wouldn’t sign the UK up to an EU quota agreement. It hasn’t said what a future returns deal might look like, or how many migrants it would accept.

Shortly before today’s PMQs, the figure was also used by Conservative MP Jonathan Gullis, who said on BBC Politics Live that Labour’s plan to “stop the boats” was “a quota sharing scheme with the EU so we take 100,000 more illegal migrants”.

Last month we wrote to Mr Sunak and then-Conservative party chair Greg Hands about the use of the “100,000 migrants” figure, and asked them to take steps to prevent the claim being repeated by party members. We have not received a response.

Earlier today the Supreme Court ruled that the UK’s proposal to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlawful. 

In the past 18 months we have written a number of fact checks concerning the Rwanda scheme, including claims that other European countries had already implemented such schemes and that similar policies were proposed in 2004. 

We also wrote about a false claim that the EU had prevented the first Rwanda flight from taking off and fact checked a statement from a Conservative MP that suggested those sent to Rwanda could later return to the UK if their refugee status is accepted.

On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, newly appointed Conservative party chair Richard Holden MP said there had been an “around 25% reduction” in the number of small boat crossings “compared to this time last year”.

We’ve had a look at the figures, and while we can’t be certain exactly what periods Mr Holden was comparing, it appears the reduction might actually be higher than he claimed.

The government publishes daily figures on small boat crossings which show that, as of 7 November, since the start of the year there have been 26,699 small boat arrivals. This is a decrease of 33% compared to the same period in 2022.

Looking at the 12 months to November 2023 shows a slightly smaller reduction of 31% compared to the same period the previous year.

It’s worth noting this data is provisional.

The government has been reacting to the publication of new data on employment and wages.

Posts shared on X by the Department for Work and Pensions, and its secretary of state Mel Stride MP, claim that the figures show economic inactivity is down by “almost 300,000 since its pandemic peak”.

That seems to be broadly correct, based on adjusted experimental economic inactivity statistics published by the Office for National Statistics. These show that in the three-month period from July to September 2023, there were 8,726,000 economically inactive people aged 16-64—that’s 285,000 fewer than in the three-month period between May and July 2022, when economic inactivity peaked at 9,011,000 (though these figures have not been adjusted).

The rate of economic inactivity has remained constant at 20.9% since the three-month period between April to June 2023, though the number of economically inactive people has increased slightly over this period.

In recent weeks, the government has said that it has “doubled” aid for Palestinian civilians—a claim also referenced by Rishi Sunak following the King’s Speech last week. 

It is true that recently announced aid for the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) doubles the total amount in aid commitments for the OPTs this year. But that comes after a substantial fall in aid commitments in recent years. We’ve looked at the numbers here.

While the Cabinet reshuffle is ongoing, there’s no doubting the big political story of the day—the return to government of former Prime Minister David Cameron, as the new foreign secretary (and the newest member of the House of Lords).

Full Fact was a different organisation back in 2016 when Mr Cameron was last in Downing Street, and our website is a different beast too, so unfortunately there’s no easy way to review all the times we’ve fact checked the former PM. (Though we do have a handy tool to check if we’ve fact checked any currently sitting MP.)

But a quick review of our archive shows we fact checked claims by Mr Cameron dozens of times between 2010 and 2016, on everything from the budget deficit and police numbers to school spending and female employment figures. And just days before the 2016 EU referendum, we live fact checked Mr Cameron’s BBC Question Time special. 

In March 2016, after we fact checked a claim Mr Cameron made at Prime Minister’s Questions about school capacity, he subsequently corrected the Parliamentary record.

Full Fact continues to monitor Prime Minister’s Questions, which returns this week, and to seek corrections if the PM or any other MP makes a false claim. 

Given there’s a fair bit of news coming out of Westminster today, the weekend may feel a long time ago now. But the big political story on Saturday and Sunday was of course protest marches in London. And on Friday we published two relevant fact checks.

The Conservative MP Danny Kruger told the Today programme last week that a poll showed by “two to one” the public feel police are “too soft” on pro-Palestinian protesters. We tracked down the YouGov poll in question and found that doesn’t fully explain what it found. 

We also spent Friday afternoon investigating a viral audio clip which was supposedly a recording of London Mayor Sadiq Khan calling for Remembrance weekend events to be postponed. We found no evidence that it was genuine—the Mayor’s office told us it was fake and the police were investigating. Since then Sky News has reported that specialist officers have reviewed the clip “featuring artificial audio” and “assessed that it does not constitute a criminal offence”.

Hello, and welcome to Full Fact’s parliamentary and politics live blog. 

We’re launching this blog a few days into the 2023-24 parliamentary session, likely to be the final session before the next general election. 

We’ll be using this page to provide updates on our politics coverage. That means you’ll see quick reactive fact checks on the day’s political agenda but also links to our more in-depth political fact checks, and our wider work dealing with online misinformation and campaigning for better information in the run-up to the election. 

Plus we’ll be giving a bit of an insight into the fact checking process, telling you about some of the claims we’re looking into and some of the (quite extensive) research that goes on behind the scenes.

This is a trial, so please do let us know what you think and how we can improve. You can find out how to get in touch with the Full Fact team here.