Dear Friend,

In November last year, we launched a campaign calling for political parties to stop using deceptive tactics. Since then over 16,000 of you have signed our petition, and the campaign even got a mention at Prime Minister’s Questions.

As the country enters the period before local elections, we are seeing more examples of 'fake' newspaper-style headlines used in political campaigning. Parties should take care to avoid potentially misleading or deceiving voters using these practices.

Will you add your name to our petition demanding an end to deceptive campaign tactics?

Add my name

Your role in identifying these campaign tactics is an important one as Full Fact relies heavily on ‘crowdsourcing’ examples that have been sent to our supporters.

If you receive political adverts that don’t look right or quote newspaper headlines in a way that doesn’t look like it tells the whole story then send a picture to us at [email protected].

Best wishes,

Craig, Digital Campaigns Manager—Full Fact

FACT CHECKS

HS2 has not cost £100 billion to date

A post being shared on social media claims that HS2 has cost £100 billion, with each mile of track costing £600 million. But this isn’t true. In January MPs were told that the cost of the 140-mile line between London and Birmingham could be as much as £66.5 billion in 2023/24 prices.

This means that the cost would be more than £475 million per mile—but not £600 million per mile as the post incorrectly claims.

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HPV vaccines are safe and effective

A widely shared post on X (formerly Twitter) from a doctor called Tess Lawrie claims that “many children have suffered terrible health problems after HPV vaccination and others have died”. The post goes on to say: “Their lives may depend on the actions you take to inform yourself of the risks today.”

This is potentially seriously misleading. The human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine has been proven safe and effective. To imply otherwise is wrong.

There are several different strains of HPV, which have been shown to raise the risk of certain cancers in later life. Data so far shows a large reduction in the rate of these cancers among people who received the HPV vaccine.

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Support Full Fact

As a registered charity, Full Fact relies on donations from the public to support our independent, impartial fact-checking and campaigning work.

Please support Full Fact ahead of this year's general election by donating £10.

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Remind me next week

Prime Minister’s £900 tax cut claim is missing vital context

In an interview with BBC Radio Newcastle on 2nd April the Prime Minister claimed that “an average person in work” would receive a tax cut of around £900, due to action by the government to reduce National Insurance contributions (NICs).

We have fact checked similar claims by government ministers before and found that they don’t paint the whole picture. Ongoing freezes to the threshold at which people begin paying NICs and income tax mean the savings for someone on the average salary are substantially smaller.

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MORE FACT CHECKS
Also this week...

Read our latest fact checks

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All the best,
Team Full Fact

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