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FACT CHECK
On Twitter, the Conservative Party, along with its party chair, Nadhim Zahawi, and various other MPs, suggested Labour chose to vote against government legislation on strike action because of its “union paymasters”. A graphic accompanying the tweet shows Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer in the pocket of Mick Lynch, head of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT).
The RMT has previously stated that its lack of affiliation to the Labour Party means it is “deliberately misleading” to describe them as “paymasters” to the party.
While the RMT no longer sits on Labour’s National Executive Committee and is therefore unable to influence policy decisions at this level, the union has in recent years donated some money to the Labour Party and to individual MPs.
However, the amounts are small compared to the sums donated by other unions which are affiliated with Labour.
A spokesperson for the Conservative Party told Full Fact: “The Labour Party, Constituency Labour Parties and Labour MPs have pocketed nearly a quarter of a million pounds of RMT cash since 2010, with the most recent donation coming as recently as 2021.”
We looked into Electoral Commission records and found that since Sir Keir Starmer became Labour leader in April 2020, Labour has received donations of at least £17 million from trade unions, none of which came from the RMT. This excludes payments made to individual MPs.
The most recent RMT donation to a Labour MP was £17,482 to Ian Mearns in 2021 for his role as chair of the union’s parliamentary group.
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FACT CHECK
Earlier this month, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) made headlines with a widely-reported estimate that between 300 and 500 excess deaths are occurring each week in the UK due to A&E delays.
But NHS England (NHSE) spokespeople repeatedly stated that they “don’t recognise these numbers” and warned against “jumping to conclusions”.
With the figure facing renewed scrutiny this week as the RCEM and NHSE gave evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee on pressures in emergency care, we analysed where the estimate comes from and what other data is available.
While there’s a lot of uncertainty around the estimate, it appears plausible, and in fact may underplay the impact of emergency care delays.
When Full Fact attempted to reproduce the RCEM’s original calculations using the latest data on care delays, we found that the model estimated that 530 deaths a week were associated with A&E delays over 12 hours.
Others have calculated broadly similar estimates and risk expert Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter told Full Fact the figure is plausible.
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MORE FACT CHECKS
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