6 Jan 2023 | Full Fact's weekly news

FACT CHECK
Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer: 2023 speeches fact checked

Happy New Year from all of us at Full Fact.

Kicking off the new year, the Prime Minister delivered a speech setting out the government’s key priorities. We took a look at some of the claims he made in his speech and in the government press release shared prior to the speech.

“Heroin and crack addicts account for almost half of all robberies”

This claim isn’t quite right. According to the government’s own review of drug use, supply and effects, from 2020, 28% of robberies (stealing where a victim is subjected to force) are estimated to be drug-related, as opposed to the “almost half” claimed by Mr Sunak.

According to the same report, it is true that nearly half of acquisitive crimes (excluding fraud) are estimated to be associated with drug use. But while the term “acquisitive crimes” includes robbery, it also refers to a number of other related crimes such as shoplifting.

We have contacted Mr Sunak’s office to confirm the 2020 review is the source of his claim.

“Around 8 million adults in England have the numeracy skills of primary school children"

This was the claim in a press release shared by the government, trailing the speech.

But this is a very different figure to one the government has used previously, in May 2022, when it said: “Around 17 million adults in England – half of the working-age population – have the numeracy skills of primary school children.”

Both figures appear to be taken from the 2011 Skills for Life survey, which measured basic literacy, numeracy and ICT skills in people aged 16-65 in England. The survey found that approximately 24% (8 million) of those aged 16-65 in England in 2011 had numeracy skills equivalent to a child aged 7-9 —while 49% (17 million) had numeracy skills equivalent to a child aged 9-11. Full Fact has contacted Number 10 and the Department for Education to confirm the source of the figure and ask why it used the 8 million figure rather than 17 million.

“[Albanian nationals] accounted for a third of all small boat crossings in the latter part of last year"

We don’t know exactly what time period Mr Sunak was referring to when he referred to “the latter part of last year”, which makes it hard to verify this claim. The most recent statistics we have from the government only cover the period to September 2022, so don’t tell us anything about the last quarter of 2022.

In the third quarter of 2022, Albanians accounted for 45% of small boat arrivals, well above a third. However, Albanian nationals did account for slightly more than a third (35%) of small boat arrivals across the first three quarters of 2022, as was reported in November.

It is possible that Mr Sunak may have slightly misspoken when he made his claim, and was intending to refer to the first three quarters of the year, or he may have been referring to as-yet-unpublished data covering October to December. We have contacted Downing Street to clarify what Mr Sunak was referring to.

Read the claims we checked in full

FACT CHECK

Keir Starmer’s New Year speech fact checked

Labour leader Keir Starmer also delivered his first major speech of 2023 this week. We took a look at some of the claims made in the speech.

“We have an economy that hoards potential and a politics that hoards power. And it’s no coincidence – no accident – that this leaves us with more regional inequality than anywhere else in Europe.”

There are many different measures of regional inequality, so without knowing exactly what Mr Starmer was referring to it’s difficult to say how accurate this claim is.

The UK appears to be a more regionally unequal country than the OECD average, though how much more unequal depends on what measure you’re looking at.

However, Mr Starmer’s claim isn’t entirely consistent with recent analysis of regional inequality published by the Labour party itself.

In December the party’s Commission on the UK’s Future, led by former prime minister Gordon Brown, published a table which showed that the UK had one of the highest rates of regional inequality among a subset of larger OECD countries, but that Greece, Lithuania and Romania were more unequal on the measure presented.

“Houses that get burgled countless times yet the police never come.”

Listing some of the “challenges” the Labour party would face if it came into power, Mr Starmer mentioned “houses that get burgled countless times yet the police never come”.

While there have been long-standing concerns about the diminishing police response to burglary, the police have committed to changing this.

In October, the leaders of all police forces in England and Wales made a commitment that officers would now attend every case of domestic burglary. The number of domestic burglaries in England and Wales has been falling consistently since the mid 1990s, as measured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

Police data also shows the number of domestic burglaries falling over the past few decades.

“We’ve got a fully costed plan for the biggest NHS training programme in its history.”

Mr Starmer’s claim Labour has a “fully costed plan for the biggest NHS training programme in its history” appears to refer to an announcement made during the party’s conference in September 2022, where shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves pledged “one of the biggest expansions of doctor and nurse numbers in the history of the NHS”.

At the time, Labour said its plan would be funded by “reintroducing the 45p additional rate of income tax, paid by those earning more than £150,000 a year,” which then-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng had recently announced would be lowered to 40p.

As we’ve previously explained, maintaining the status quo of the 45p rate would not have freed up any new money to spend on training new NHS staff, unless some other part of government spending was reduced, taxes increased or borrowing increased.

Since Labour made its announcement, changes to the additional rate of income tax have been abandoned by the government.

Labour now says that its plan would be funded by abolishing the non-dom tax status, which, according to a report published in September 2022, could raise an estimated £3.2 billion a year in additional tax revenue. However, in the meantime, the party appears to have changed the expected cost of doubling the number of doctors being trained (the main part of its plan), from £1.1 billion to £1.85 billion per year.

We’ve contacted Labour to confirm the current costing of its NHS training programme.