Right now, it’s party conference season—likely the last one before the next general election—and the political parties are warming up their campaign plans.
Ahead of the election, we want the political parties to feel pressure to seek our votes honestly: in their manifestos, in their advertising and other ways they campaign locally and nationally. Will you help us?
We can only achieve this by working together. The more of us there are, the louder our voice. The election is run over 650 constituencies, and we need help in every one of them. We’ll keep you up to date with what is happening nationally, and by sharing your postcode, you can be involved at the local level by speaking to MPs and candidates in your area.
In a speech last week announcing changes to the government’s Net Zero strategy, the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would scrap a number of proposals, including taxes on meat and flying, compulsory car sharing, and a “diktat” for households to sort rubbish into seven different bins.
Some of the things Mr Sunak mentioned do appear to have some basis in existing government plans or legislation. Others—like the purported taxes on meat and flying, and compulsory car sharing—have been suggested by other bodies, but Full Fact has seen no evidence that they were ever taken up as government policies or proposals which would require “scrapping” to prevent.
Calculations on social media have led to claims that the government pays private health companies twice as much as GPs.
This isn’t right. NHS England spent £10.9 billion purchasing care from independent sector providers specifically in 2021/22, while payments made to general practice during this financial year totalled £10.1 billion.
In a post to X (formerly Twitter) earlier this month, Reform UK party leader Richard Tice shared an article about plans to introduce new age assessment processes for asylum seekers, and stated that “50% ‘children’ turn out to be adults”. This isn’t true.
The 50% figure likely refers to the number of resolved cases where someone’s age has been disputed and the applicant found to be an adult. As only a minority of asylum applications who claim to be under 18 have their age disputed, it's not correct to say that 50% of all child asylum seekers turn out to be adults.
