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In this week's newsletter:

General election update

Labour campaign video doesn’t accurately reflect NHS waiting list data

Knife crime in England and Wales is rising, even if you exclude London

How does the UK’s GDP growth compare with other major economies?

Election live blog

General election explained

But first an update about what Full Fact have been up to during the first week of the general election campaign.

This will be the first UK election in the age of generative AI, when anyone can create, produce and disseminate their own version of reality at the click of a button.

It’s a big challenge, and we have to give people confidence that there is still reliable information that they can trust.

That means we need to be on the lookout for audio and video deepfakes, and we’ve already called on all political parties to maintain the highest standards of honesty and transparency if they use AI to create campaign material.

Labour campaign video doesn’t accurately reflect NHS waiting list data

A campaign video from the Labour party on social media seems to have made a very familiar mistake when it claimed “seven and a half million people are on waiting lists”.

That’s not what NHS data shows. About 6.3 million people are on the main NHS England waiting list. Some need more than one kind of treatment, so there are about 7.5 million cases on the list.

Knife crime in England and Wales is rising, even if you exclude London

On Sunday the home secretary James Cleverly was asked about figures showing a 7% increase in knife crime. In response, he claimed: “If you took Labour-run London out of the equation, that figure would be down.”

The latest data for the year ending December 2023 shows knife crime in England and Wales is up even if you exclude London.

How does the UK’s GDP growth compare with other major economies?

During an interview Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed that “the economy is growing faster than almost any other major country including the United States”.

This is true when looking at the latest quarterly GDP growth for G7 countries. But the UK’s annual growth last year was among the worst in the G7, and the UK has seen comparatively slower growth since the pandemic than most other G7 countries, including the US.

MailOnline corrects column which misrepresented waiting list figures

Mel Stride’s claim about £900 ‘tax cut’ for workers doesn’t account for threshold freezes

MONDAY 27TH MAY

Sir Keir Starmer’s first major campaign speech, fact checked

Small boat claims in Conservative ad don’t reflect rise in crossings this year

FRIDAY 24TH MAY

Experts say Government not on track to deliver 40 new hospitals

Net migration decreased last year, but remains higher than at the start of this Parliament

THURSDAY 23RD MAY

Fact checked: Rishi Sunak’s interview on day one of the campaign trail

Discover our latest fact checks on our general election live blog.

Discover more...

ELECTION EXPLAINED

Read our latest analysis of key topics that are likely to define the general election over the next month.

New voter ID rules

Learn more...

NHS waiting lists

Learn more...

Size of armed forces

Learn more...

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