The key claims from this weekend’s TV election debates
2 December 2019 | TV debates: fact checked
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This weekend we saw two TV debates between representatives of the seven largest parties in the general election campaign. We've fact checked the BBC debate on Friday and last night’s ITV debate. Here’s our round up of the facts behind the claims on some of the biggest issues of this election.
Following the attack at London Bridge on Friday, several claims have been made about the case and sentencing laws under the previous Conservative and Labour governments. We are looking at these claims and will publish our analysis when it’s ready.
** NHS waiting times
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In both debates, Plaid Cymru's Adam Price said that A&E waiting times in Wales are at their worst recorded level. 75.3% of attendances saw patients wait less than four hours in A&Es across Wales in October, the lowest proportion on record. In the same month 93.9% of attendances saw patients wait less than 12 hours. That’s a slight improvement from the September figure (which was a record low).
On Friday Labour's Rebecca Long-Bailey said: “we’ve got 4.4 million people on waiting lists who can’t get operations”. This figure refers to the number of people on waiting lists in total, not just those waiting for operations. In September 2019 there were just over 4.4 million referrals for treatment on the NHS in England, where the treatment had not yet begun, according to the latest data.
These “incomplete” treatments are often referred to as the “waiting list”. It’s possible the figure could be as high as 4.6 million though, as not all hospital trusts submitted figures to the NHS. The size of the waiting list has generally been rising since 2011/12, when it stood at 2.6 million referrals in August 2011.
** Can we really find 50,000 more nurses?
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In the BBC debate on Friday, the Conservative Party’s Rishi Sunak talked of the Conservative pledge to put “50,000 nurses on our wards”, while Caroline Lucas of the Green Party criticised this, describing it as “50,000 nurses that turn out to be more like 30,000 if we are lucky”.
The Conservative manifesto promises “50,000 more nurses”, not “50,000 new nurses”, increasing the overall number of nurses in the NHS by 50,000 by 2024/25 from its current level (which was roughly 287,000 full-time equivalent nurses and health visitors in the NHS in England, as of August 2019).
That is intended to include a target of 18,500 nurses already working for the NHS who will be encouraged to stay in their jobs rather than leaving. As we’ve written about before, the NHS has a significant turnover of staff; improving the retention rate of nurses is a reasonable approach if you want to increase the number overall.
The bigger question has been around the funding for these nurses. The Conservative manifesto costings commits less than £900 million to this increase in nurses by 2023/24, which as we’ve written is not enough to pay for 50,000 more nurses. Mr Sunak seemed to confirm that this will come from the NHS budget, rather than representing additional funding.
** How immigration affects wages
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On Friday, Richard Tice of the Brexit Party and Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP clashed over immigration.
Richard Tice claimed that “unlimited immigration in the last 15 years has depressed wages”, but Nicola Sturgeon countered, claiming “there hasn’t been unlimited immigration and it doesn’t cut wages”.
Earnings have stagnated, if not fallen in real terms since 2010, and remain below their 2008 peak before the recession. There are lots of things that affect wages. The evidence suggests that immigration hasn’t had a big effect.
The impact of immigration on wages depends on who you are, where you are, and what you do. It’s not one story.
Studies broadly agree that the overall impact of immigration on wages is small, changing wages by less than 1%, and probably short term.
The people who lose out are most likely to be people on low wages, while people on medium or high wages might benefit.
** Children in poverty
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On Sunday, the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon said there were “four million children living in poverty, it’s rising despite what the Prime Minister said falsely this morning”.
There are a number of different ways to measure poverty, but based on figures from the Social Metrics Commission there were 4.6 million children in relative poverty in the UK in 2017/18. Official government figures show a similar number of children living in poverty whether you look at relative or absolute measures (around four million after housing costs are accounted for).
Nicola Sturgeon seems to be referring to Boris Johnson's appearance on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning, where he incorrectly said that there are 400,000 fewer children in poverty than in 2010. Looking at the number of children in absolute poverty, after housing costs, the estimated number has slightly declined from an estimated 3.8 million in 2009/10 to 3.7 million in 2017/18. But looking at most other measures the number has stayed the same or increased.
On Sunday, the Conservative's Rishi Sunak said that 400,000 fewer people are in absolute poverty today than in 2010. That’s correct looking at the estimated number of people in the UK living in poverty between 2009/10 and 2017/18 before housing costs. It dropped from 9.9 million to 9.5 million.
** Getting Brexit ‘done’
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Caroline Lucas of the Greens said in her opening statement in the BBC debate on Friday that Boris Johnson’s deal would not get Brexit done and that it would be “the start of years more wrangling”. In hers, the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon added that Brexit would “not in any sense be done” if Boris Johnson won a majority, calling it “the biggest con in this election” on Sunday night.
By contrast, in his closing statement in the ITV debate on Sunday, the Conservatives’ Rishi Sunak asked the viewers “Do you want Brexit sorted in weeks, or more referendums taking years?”
As we’ve discussed before, “getting Brexit done” is a process, not an event. It’s correct that the UK will stop being a member of the EU if Boris Johnson’s deal passes Parliament and the country leaves on January 31 2020, which is just over eight weeks away. But that will not be the end of the Brexit process.
Negotiations with the EU on a future relationship would then take place during a transition period, during which time the UK will still follow EU rules and pay money into the EU budget.
Click below for a full analysis of the key claims and our sources:
The debates: fact checked ([link removed])
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