Rishi Sunak promised to earn public trust. Will his team?

28 Oct 2022 | Full Fact's weekly news
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FACT CHECK
Honesty and the new Cabinet

“Trust is earned and I will earn yours” - Rishi Sunak

Our new Prime Minister has pledged to put honesty and integrity at the heart of his government. We hope this turns out to be true. But some of his new Cabinet picks have failed to take action after making false, misleading or unevidenced claims.

Thérèse Coffey:
“Despite the challenges of the last two years, unemployment is down and employment is up”.

This was incorrect when Ms Coffey made this claim in April ([link removed]) , and it’s incorrect now. In the two year period she was talking about, the number of people in employment fell by 580,000.

Suella Braverman:
“400,000 more jobs than pre-covid”.

This is false ([link removed]) for the same reason as Ms Coffey’s claim. This figure ignores the self-employed and refers to payrolled employees only.

[Note: The figure now is 320,000 less than it was pre-pandemic].

Michael Gove:
“We did everything we could to get that equipment [PPE], 97% of the equipment that we secured was ready, fit-for-purpose and there on the front line”.

This claim ([link removed]) is misleading. The Department of Health and Social Care have said that 97% of PPE procured may have been usable in some capacity, but £2.6 billion of this was deemed “not suitable for use within the health and social care sector”, and so couldn’t reasonably be be described as “fit-for-purpose and there on the front line”, as Mr Gove said.

Kemi Badenoch:
“When we both worked in the Treasury, myself and other ministers raised the issue of Covid loan fraud. You dismissed us, and it has cost taxpayers £17 billion.”

This is incorrect ([link removed]) . The £17 billion figure is the estimate for the total money lost from various loan schemes designed to support businesses during the pandemic. Much of this was lost in “good faith”, such as by businesses who were unable to repay loans. Fraud is estimated to have accounted for £4.9 billion of this loss.

Nadhim Zahawi:
“Today, I can announce that, as Prime Minister, I will cut the base rate of income tax to 19p in 2023 and 18p in 2024. That will give households back £900 a year on average.”

This pledge ([link removed]) was made by Mr Zahawi during his leadership bid, but he has refused to provide any evidence for it. The available data suggests on average households would save much less.

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If the Prime Minister is serious about earning the public’s trust, he should set an example when it comes to honest politics - and make sure his team does the same.

You can find our full list of MPs who have failed to correct the record below. This week we added a new name to the list after Labour MP Jess Phillips made an inaccurate claim about the amount the government's mini-Budget cost the Bank of England.

The list ([link removed])
INVESTIGATION
How the media misreported the '£2,500 energy bill cap' ([link removed])

A Full Fact investigation using our AI media-monitoring software has revealed widespread misreporting of the Energy Price Guarantee, at a time when much of the public was confused about whether their annual energy bill was capped. A poll last month found 38% of people wrongly believed their energy bill “cannot exceed £2,500 a year”.

We found 112 potentially misleading claims which might have led people to believe their bill - rather than the unit price of their energy - would be capped this winter. Ten of these explicitly and wrongly suggested no household would pay more than £2,500 a year for its energy bills. The 112 claims were made by 25 different media outlets and politicians.

Our findings ([link removed])
FACT CHECK


** Explained: £115,000 ‘allowance’ for former prime ministers ([link removed])
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The claim that Liz Truss could receive £115,000 of public money for the rest of her life has been all over the news, with some outlets describing it variously as a “salary,” a “pension” or a “grant”.

In truth, former prime ministers are entitled to claim up to £115,000 a year for expenses. This is the Public Duty Costs Allowance, which is a reimbursement to “meet the actual cost of continuing to fulfil public duties”.

Costs they can claim for include diary support, Met Police protection on public visits, correspondence, staffing at public visits, support to charitable work, social media platforms and managing and maintaining an ex-PM’s office.

Just because they’re entitled to this sum, doesn’t mean they will necessarily claim the full amount. That said, for the last couple of years, most living former prime ministers have claimed pretty much the full amount. Theresa May claimed the least, with £58,000.

You may well have seen this piece last week, but we’ve significantly added to it to go into more depth about severance pay, security provisions and the pension scheme for former PMs.

The facts behind the figure ([link removed])
MORE FACT CHECKS
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