What does child poverty look like?

This week, a campaign launched by Premier League footballer Marcus Rashford convinced the government to fund free school meals over the summer holiday. It led to a clash between Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer in Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions.

Mr Starmer quoted a report by the government’s Social Mobility Commission (SMoC) to claim that “a report last week... concluded that there are now 600,000 more children living in relative poverty than in 2012... The report went on to say child poverty rates are projected to increase to 5.2 million by 2022.”

The SMoC report shows that, since 2011/12 and up to 2018/19, the number of children in relative poverty has risen by about 600,000.

The projected figure of 5.2 million children in poverty by 2022 seems to quote estimates based on projections made by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in 2017. These projections suggested that child poverty would rise from 30% in 2015/16 to 37% in 2021/22.

But if the projections had played out for real, then we’d expect child poverty to be at around 35% by now. Given that relative child poverty is still 30% (unchanged since 2015/16), we don’t think these projections are still valid.

Boris Johnson also made claims

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Video of London protesters chanting “We’re racist and that’s the way we like it” is fake

On Saturday, several thousand people descended upon Westminster with the reported aim of protecting historic statues. This was a response to Black Lives Matter protests the previous weekend.

A video of a demonstration on Saturday 13 June claimed to show protestors chanting “We’re racist, we’re racist and that’s the way we like it”. It was shared on social media thousands of times, and was reported as fact by several national newspapers last weekend.

The audio is not from the event and has been added onto the video footage. It even seems to be playing on a loop—a telltale sign of a fake.

The audio has also been identified as coming from a video of racist Chelsea fans on the Paris metro in 2015.

We also debunked the claim that there had been a number of stabbings during the protests and counter-protests. The Metropolitan Police later confirmed there had been no reported stabbings connected to the demonstrations.

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No, the Covid-19 track and trace app has not been automatically downloaded onto your phone

We’ve seen a claim circulating on Facebook that the NHS Covid-19 “track and trace” app has been automatically downloaded onto people’s Android phones under the name “COVID-19 exposure notifications”.

This is incorrect. What has been added to both Android and Apple phones is the Exposure Notification API. This is not an app itself—it’s an underlying technology developed by Apple and Google that allows coronavirus tracking apps made by public health bodies to work across devices.

Even when the app does become available, downloading it will not be mandatory. The NHS says “people will always have the choice of whether or not to download the app”.

App-alling inaccuracies

The latest episode of The Full Fact Podcast is out now!

This week, we discuss claims about poverty in the UK raised at PMQs following Marcus Rashford’s letter to MPs, and dissect rumours made about protests in London over the weekend.

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