This week we look into a claim by Labour around food bank use, one by Rishi Sunak about NHS waiting times, and claims on social media about measles. 

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FACT CHECKS


** How many people use food banks? ([link removed])
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A document outlining the Labour party’s five “national missions”, reportedly the party’s election “campaigning bible”, claims there are “2.98 million people now using food banks, up from 60,000 in 2010”. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has also used the same figures on social media.

These figures are actually the number of food parcels handed out by the Trussell Trust, the largest food bank network in the UK. They are not the number of individual people using foodbanks. We contacted the Labour Party and TUC about these figures. We have yet to receive a response from Labour. The TUC thanked us for highlighting the distinction and will use the correct description in future.


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** Rishi Sunak wrong to say 18-week waits have fallen since pledge ([link removed])
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The Prime Minister said in a comment piece in the Telegraph that the government had substantially reduced 18-week waits since January 2023. This is not true.

It seems likely that Mr Sunak meant to talk about 18-month waits, a much smaller category in the data, which has fallen substantially in the last year. We've contacted Rishi Sunak and The Telegraph to request a correction regarding this claim and are yet to hear back.


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** The risk of measles in richer countries is real ([link removed])
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Posts on Facebook falsely claim that measles is “not a threat” to people in the developed world and that the MMR vaccine is “dangerous and ineffective”.

Both claims are untrue. The disease is usually mild but there is a risk of complications in 10-20% of measles cases, even in richer countries like the UK. It can result in quite serious illness, including pneumonia in 1-6% of cases.

According to research cited by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) ([link removed]) “vaccination with one dose of MMR vaccine is at least 95% effective in preventing clinical measles”. However, a second dose is recommended for maximum protection. Like many vaccines, MMR can produce side effects, which the UKHSA says are “usually mild and much less severe ([link removed]) than the disease itself”.


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MORE FACT CHECKS
Also this week...
* The UK doesn’t currently spend 2.5% of GDP on defence ([link removed])
* The UK’s population is projected to reach 73.7 million by 2036, not 2026 ([link removed])
* A German court did not rule that the measles virus doesn’t exist ([link removed])

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