During his Labour party conference speech yesterday Sir Keir Starmer made two claims that we have looked into, both about the record of Labour’s previous period in government. The first is about a fall in crime and the second related to the National Minimum Wage.
The first claim was that crime fell by one third under the Labour government. We don’t have comparable data covering all previous administrations, but the central crime survey data shows that crime peaked prior to the last Labour government taking office, and has been declining since.
The second claim was that the Conservatives have not had an achievement like the introduction of the National Minimum Wage. However, the Conservatives did introduce a higher minimum wage, the National Living Wage, in 2016.
There have been a number of misleading videos circulating on social media about the ongoing Hamas attacks on Israel. One claimed a new air assault was underway, showing rockets in the sky near tall buildings. The video is however from 2021 and does not depict the current conflict.
Another video purported to show a rocket attack on Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport. This clip has been online since February 2020, when a Turkish news outlet reported that it showed Turkish forces launching a rocket attack in Syria.
In an interview with the Sunday Times ahead of the Labour party conference the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves was reported to have said: “Fewer homes are being built than at any time since the Second World War”.
This claim doesn’t quite stack up, as current house building figures show more houses are being built than a decade ago, though one industry projection earlier this year suggested house building could hit a post-war low in the next few years if certain potential policy changes occur.
In a speech at Labour’s National Annual Women’s Conference, shadow women and equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds claimed that the Labour party “is the first political party to reach parity in terms of men and women MPs.”
This claim requires context, as both Labour and the Liberal Democrats returned more than 50% women MPs at the 2019 general election. In Labour’s case, women comprised 51% of elected MPs, and the for Liberal Democrats women comprised 64%.
