FACT CHECK Shadow chancellor misleads on unemployment
“Twelve years of the Tories has left Britain with falling wages and high unemployment.” — Rachel Reeves MP
The first part about falling wages is true, if you take into account inflation. But “high unemployment” is a different story.
It’s difficult to definitively decide what counts as “high”, due to its subjective nature. However, looking at data from the last fifty years, unemployment is currently very low by historical standards.
The unemployment rate now is 3.7%. That’s about half the level it was in 2010 when the Conservatives came into office (7.9%). And the rate is much lower now than it was during long periods in the 80s and 90s.
In response to our fact check, a number of people have suggested that this may be because the government has changed the definition of unemployment so the figures look more favourable.
While definitions have changed in the past, the data going back to the 1970s uses the same official definition, so this is a like-for-like comparison.
You might remember from last week’s newsletter that Andrew Bridgen MP spread vaccine misinformation in an edition of PMQs. So we were a bit wary on Tuesday when he stepped up in the Commons again to deliver a speech on “vaccine harms”.
We listened to the speech and have added much needed missing context to his comments:
Many media outlets have reported analysis by the Labour party, which claimed that five million people in England were denied GP appointments in October 2022. But this figure is based on several assumptions that may not be correct.
As far as we can tell, it’s simply not possible to estimate the number of people turned down for MP appointments. The available data just isn’t reliable enough for that. So it’s wholly unclear whether Labour’s figure is an underestimate, an overestimate or broadly right.
One example of why the figure might be wrong is that Labour used responses from the latest GP Patient Survey. That survey was conducted between January and April, so using this information to make assumptions about appointments the following October isn’t ideal.
There are a number of other problems with the analysis, which we’ve gone into in further detail in our fact check.
"If everyone in the public sector had a pay rise in line with inflation, it would cost an extra £28 billion, an extra £1,000 per household." - Steve Barclay MP
This £28 billion figure is being used quite frequently in the media in relation to the ongoing pay disputes. This year the public sector pay bill is estimated to be £244 billion.
So this £28 billion figure comes from adding around 11% (the current rate of inflation) to that £244 billion bill which is around £27 billion. The Treasury added another £1 billion as a result of “pay drift and workforce growth”. Split amongst the 28 million households in the UK that’s an “illustrative” £1,000 each.
However, paying public sector workers more would also lead to them paying more in tax. So the net cost to the government would be somewhat lower.
The BBC reported the government could recoup as much as a third. We asked the Treasury how much it would expect to get back through increased tax payments from public sector workers following an inflation-matching pay increase.
They told us that it was unable to model this impact, but said that higher public sector pay would also lead to public sector employers paying more in employer national insurance contributions.
There are also questions over how useful the government’s calculation is, given pay has already increased by 5% this year. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates the “extra” cost involved in increasing pay this year to match inflation would be around £13 billion.
