…in the same week the PM makes tenth false employment claim in Parliament
29 Apr 2022 | Full Fact's weekly news
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UPDATE
23,210 people are standing with us.
This week showed again that Parliament’s corrections system is broken.
For the tenth time, the Prime Minister repeated the same false employment claim. And despite multiple letters from ourselves and various official bodies, and further challenge in Parliament this week, he is yet to correct the record.
Meanwhile, after one of our fact checks, Labour MP Chris Bryant tweeted a correction to a claim he had made about heat pumps and VAT. But if he’d made this claim in Parliament and wanted to correct it there, he would have been unable to. Only ministers can correct the record, meaning 86% of MPs (and 100% of opposition MPs) are unable to.
With your backing, we wrote to all MPs about the need to fix this broken system. Yesterday we had a reply from the Speaker of the House of Commons supporting a Procedure Committee inquiry into how corrections are handled in Parliament.
If you haven’t already, join over 20,000 others in signing our petition and asking all MPs to stand up for honesty.
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FACT CHECK
High reported Covid deaths due to Easter holiday backlog ([link removed])
A great number of social media users have pointed out that lots of Covid deaths were reported last week. They say that 482 Covid deaths were reported in the UK on 19 April, 508 on 20 April and 646 on 21 April.
This is correct, but needs to be taken in the context of the Easter weekend.
Official data shows zero deaths were reported from Friday 15 April to Monday 18 April, meaning there was a backlog of deaths to be reported afterwards. It’s important to remember these figures represent the number of deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test reported on each day, not the number that occurred on each day.
This is very similar to the ‘Tuesday problem’ we’ve seen frequently over the pandemic. The daily figures are inflated on that day due to a lag in reporting over the weekend. That’s why a seven-day average is a better way of looking at the death-rate.
Data on the number of Covid deaths by the date of death rather than by the date of reporting, shows that the daily number is falling.
More context for the figures ([link removed])
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Every day our team of fact checkers and campaigners find, check and challenge false claims. Your job will be to make our voice heard in the daily news cycle.
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FACT CHECK
Boris Johnson wrong on employment figures…again ([link removed])
No, we’ve not just left this from last week. Although we have kept the same title…because the same thing happened again.
For the tenth time, the Prime Minister claimed in Parliament that there are more people in work now than there were before the pandemic began. Official ONS figures prove otherwise.
He must correct the official record.
Our often-mentioned fact check ([link removed])
INTERVENTIONS
Corrections Corner ([link removed])
We’re grateful to MP Chris Bryant, who this week corrected a false claim he made about heat pumps and VAT.
We hope every MP sees this and follows suit. Mistakes happen, but all too rarely do politicians correct themselves. This should change.
Full Fact must also make a correction this week. In last week’s newsletter, we wrote about Labour’s claim that the average household will be £2,620 worse off this year and explained that these figures are flawed.
In our explanation, we offered an alternate estimate using ONS data, arriving at £700. Readers pointed out an issue in this calculation, and using a different method the figure would be £1,000. Other estimates are slightly higher, but still significantly lower than Labour’s estimate. Thanks to those who got in touch with us about this.
The original heat pumps fact check ([link removed])
The corrected Labour leaflets fact check ([link removed])
MORE FACT CHECKS
Also this week...
* Was Rishi Sunak’s in-laws’ company a ‘beneficiary’ of a UK-India trade deal? ([link removed])
* Photographs of aeroplanes don’t prove existence of ‘chemtrails’ ([link removed])
* Clip of French TV shows technical glitch, not election fraud ([link removed])
Read our latest fact checks ([link removed])
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