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In an interview with Sir Tony Blair last month, Sir Keir Starmer referred anecdotally to a visit he’d made to Scotland’s Whitelee Wind Farm.
Mr Starmer was right to say that Whitelee, which is owned and operated by ScottishPower Renewables, is the UK’s largest onshore wind farm. However, he got some other details wrong.
For example, he claimed “there’s 350 wind turbines there”, when there are actually 215. Mr Starmer also claimed he had been told all of its wind turbines were built in Indonesia, which is incorrect.
ScottishPower told Full Fact: “Whitelee is the UK’s largest onshore wind farm. Its 215 turbines, manufactured in Europe, generate up to 539 MW of electricity – enough to power over 350,000 homes.”
The company said Keir Starmer visited Whitelee in 2021 and discussed the need for a UK industrial strategy with ScottishPower CEO Keith Anderson.
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FACT CHECK
On the BBC’s Politics Live show on 3 July, Reform UK politician Alex Phillips claimed that international students can study at universities in the UK without passing a test to show they are proficient in the English language.
This claim is misleading, as virtually all international students will either have to pass an English language test or otherwise demonstrate their proficiency before being allowed to enrol on a course.
A functioning democracy depends on good information. Claims made by politicians are used to inform public debate.
When politicians don’t correct misleading claims, the public’s trust is undermined and bad information can spread further, with consequences that affect all of us.
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FACT CHECK
A video on Facebook falsely claims that the “average income” of a plumber is between £150,000 and £1 million per year. But the available evidence suggests that this is not true.
The claim appears in a Facebook video about jobs that ”pay you” over £100,000 per year without a degree. The video has over 1,500 likes.
One claim made about plumbers in the video is that: “their average income is between £150,000 and £1 million per year.”
The government’s National Careers Service says the average income for a plumber in the UK starts at £15,000 and can go up to £40,000 with experience, which is considerably lower than the claim in the video. The government website says its salary data comes from the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, industry bodies, live vacancies and public sector pay scales.
However, a spokesperson for the Department for Education told Full Fact that this data does not include the income of self-employed plumbers or take overtime rates into account. But while the average income for a plumber, when including self-employed plumbers, is likely to be higher than the National Careers Service figures, there’s no evidence to support the claim it is between £150,000 and £1 million a year.
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MORE FACT CHECKS
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All the best,
Team Full Fact
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