The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, claimed that youth unemployment is at an historic low.

17 Mar 2023 | Full Fact's weekly news
View in your browser ([link removed])

FACT CHECK
Youth unemployment no longer at historic low

During an interview on the 'Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg' show on BBC One, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt claimed that the level of youth unemployment in the UK was at a record low and that the number of jobs available to young people was higher than it had ever been.

Although this is true when comparing annual data, quarterly data shows that the level of youth unemployment has risen since it reached a record low last summer, while the overall number of vacancies available to all job seekers has fallen.

The way statistics are presented is a crucial part of how they are interpreted and understood by the public. If data is presented without clear context or obvious caveats, it can give an incomplete or misleading picture.

What do the statistics say? ([link removed])
FACT CHECK


** Think tank figure does not show 100,000 children ‘never went back to school’ due to lockdown ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------
Isabel Oakeshott, the journalist behind the Telegraph’s ‘Lockdown Files’ investigation which revealed a cache of Whatsapp messages sent and received by former health secretary Matt Hancock during the pandemic, has repeated inaccurate claims about 100,000 “ghost children” leaving education “forever” due to lockdown.

This is an old claim about the impact of the pandemic, and as we have written before, describing the 100,000 figure in this way is misleading. It is a figure for the number of children in England who missed at least half of their school sessions in Autumn 2020, not the number of children who disappeared completely from education.

Ms Oakeshott says in her Telegraph opinion article, the claim about 100,000 “ghost children” originates with the Center for Social Justice (CSJ).

The CSJ did publish a report about school attendance, but it does not say what Ms Oakeshott claims. In the summer of 2021, the think tank published a report claiming that between September and December 2020, 93,514 pupils in England were “severely absent”, which means they attended fewer than 50% of available sessions in Autumn 2020. While some of these children may not have come back, the figure does not entirely describe children who left school during lockdown and never returned.

We wrote to the Telegraph to ask for a correction and they have since removed the line from the online version of Ms Oakeshott’s opinion piece and issued a print correction which described the 100,000 claim as “incorrect”.

What did the CSJ’s research find? ([link removed])
FACT CHECK


** Hundreds of people have been prosecuted for tax evasion in the last two years ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------
Labour MP Imran Hussain, who also serves as the shadow minister for employment rights, has corrected himself after posting a tweet in which he wrongly claimed that only eight cases of tax evasion have been prosecuted in the last two years.

The figure of eight prosecutions refers only to prosecutions for the enabling of tax evasion. These are cases in which lawyers, accountants or other financial institutions are charged with assisting their clients in carrying out tax fraud.

However HMRC told Full Fact that in the past two years there have been a total of 399 tax evasion prosecutions.

We contacted Mr Hussain about his tweet. He thanked us for bringing the error to his attention and said that he had deleted his original post, replacing it with a new version. He added: “The tweet has now been posted with an amendment which clarifies that this relates to the enablers of tax evasion.”

If an MP makes a false or misleading claim on social media, they should correct this quickly on the same platform where the claim was made. We are grateful that Mr Hussain has done so in this case.

Stand up for good information ([link removed])
MORE FACT CHECKS
Also this week...
* The average junior doctor gets paid more than £14 an hour ([link removed])
* Research on long term effects of childhood infections misreported ([link removed])
* Ukraine’s Diia app is not connected to the ‘Great Reset’ ([link removed])

Read our latest fact checks ([link removed])
Stop the spread of bad information

Find these updates useful? We'd be incredibly grateful if you could share our fact checks and help more people access good information.
[link removed] Share ([link removed])
[link removed] https%3A%2F%2Ffullfact.org%2Fnews%2Fjeremy-hunt-youth-unemployment-low%2F Tweet ([link removed] https%3A%2F%2Ffullfact.org%2Fnews%2Fjeremy-hunt-youth-unemployment-low%2F)
[link removed] Forward ([link removed])
[link removed] Share ([link removed])
All the best,
Team Full Fact

============================================================
** Follow us ([link removed])
** Donate ([link removed])
** Like us ([link removed])
** Follow us ([link removed])
Have any questions or feedback? Please ** get in touch via our contact form ([link removed])
. We do not respond to direct replies to this email address.

Find out ** how Full Fact is funded ([link removed])
.

Copyright © Full Fact 2023 - All rights reserved

A registered charity (no. 1158683) and a non-profit company (no. 6975984) limited by guarantee and registered in England and Wales.

Our mailing address is:
17 Oval Way, London, SE11 5RR

We use Mailchimp to send you our emails and to see which articles are most popular. ** Read our privacy policy ([link removed])
or ** Mailchimp's privacy policy ([link removed])

** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
** update subscription preferences ([link removed])