FACT CHECK Labour claims about a £500 rise in mortgage payments lack important context
“We had a kamikaze mini-Budget two weeks ago. As a direct consequence, mortgages are going up. And not by a little—hundreds of pounds, £500 is the average, per month.”- Sir Keir Starmer
This calculation compares monthly repayments under a deal fixed in August 2020 at 1.6%, and a deal with the same terms, but fixed at 6% now. The sum is accurate, and does come to around £500 extra per month.
But what should be clarified is Mr Starmer’s claim that this is a “direct consequence” of the mini-Budget.
Mortgage rates have risen sharply since the mini-Budget on 23 September. But crucially, interest rates were already rising earlier this year - and much of the £500 rise estimated by Labour is due to rates climbing prior to the mini-Budget.
The average rate for the sort of mortgage Mr Starmer was talking about was already 3.64% at the end of August, three weeks prior to the mini-Budget. If you take that as a baseline, then a rise to 6% now would increase monthly payments by around £280—a large amount, but less than the £500 figure Mr Starmer used.
You may well have seen this figure in the news, or heard it mentioned by former home secretary Priti Patel. But the Home Office hasn’t published the data to back it up.
This week, it told us there were certain days in the summer when the proportion of small boat arrivals who were Albanian nationals exceeded 60%.
When asked whether that figure represented the summer period in general, as suggested by Ms Patel in Parliament, it declined to comment further.
We have written to the Home Office asking for them to publish the data.
“We've bought the Moderna which protects you against both Covid and flu, which is a good thing, so get that booster in place.”- Nadhim Zahawi MP
A number of our readers drew our attention to this claim from a BBC interview with Laura Kuenssberg.
The claim isn’t accurate and Mr Zahawi has issued a correction. The UK Health Security Agency confirmed to us that in order to be protected against both Covid-19 and flu, people should have two separate vaccines.
The Moderna booster is a bivalent vaccine. That means it can target two different variants of the virus, in this case the original strain and the Omicron variant. Flu and Covid are caused by two different viruses, and at the moment you need two different vaccines to protect from both.
Moderna are working on a combination Covid and flu vaccine, but don’t aim to roll it out until winter 2023.
“How quickly our nurses have gone from the country’s heroes to this government’s villains, offered a derisory 72p a week pay rise.” - Ian Lavery MP
But the new offer increases wages by 72p per hour, not 72p per week.
In July, the UK government accepted recommendations from the independent NHS pay review bodies. This increased pay for over a million NHS staff in England by at least £1,400 a year. That equates to 72p more per hour in cash-terms before deductions.
Mr Lavery told us he got his figures from comments made in the media by the Royal College of Nursing’s general secretary. It’s true the general secretary did say this, but a spokesperson said to us that she misspoke during her interview.
With inflation at 10%, however, it should be said that this pay increase is actually a real-terms reduction. £1,400 represents roughly a 5% pay increase for a newly qualified nurse, meaning the cost of living is increasing faster than pay.
