Fact checking organisation Full Fact went through Sunak’s speech and found at least 3 misleading claims made by the Prime Minister.

After Prime Minister Rishi Sunak delivered his keynote speech at Conservative Party conference earlier this week, fact checkers have been pouring over its contents to verify its claims.

The Tories have a habit of lying, with all sorts of false claims being made by ministers. Take the claim by Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho claiming in a speech that Labour is “relaxed about taxing meat” – something which is not Labour Party policy.

Fact checking organisation Full Fact went through Sunak’s speech and found at least 3 misleading claims made by the Prime Minister.

1.“The Labour plan is to cook up some deal with the EU which could see us accepting around 100,000 of Europe’s asylum seekers.”   

This claim by Sunak is quite simply incorrect. The Tory Party has repeated the claim after Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer told The Times on 14 September that his party would seek a migrant returns agreement with the EU, which the Tories say would mean the UK taking “100,000 migrants” a year.

It has previously been made by Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick as well as Greg Hands. However, Full Fact has checked the claim that the UK would take 100,000 migrants a year under Labour’s plan and found it to be unreliable as well as misleading.

Full Fact has stated: “This is misleading. The 100,000 figure is a Conservative party estimate which is not reliable, because it makes several assumptions and appears to misinterpret a recent EU agreement on relocating asylum seekers. We don’t know how many migrants the UK might take under a future returns deal with the EU—Labour has not said what such a deal would involve, or how many migrants it would accept.”

2. ‘We now have record numbers of police officers’ – Rishi Sunak

Yet another misleading claim made by Sunak which lacked crucial context. Full Fact states: “Although the number of warranted officers in England and Wales has increased since 2010, the overall number of police, staff and community support officers is lower than the 2010 peak.”

According to Home Office figures, as of 31 March 2023 there were 233,832 full-time equivalent (FTE) police workers (including officers, staff, designated officers and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs)) employed by the 43 territorial forces in England and Wales, an increase of 3.8% on the previous year.

These figures include 147,430 FTE warranted police officers and is the highest number since comparable records began. The previous peak was in March 2009 when there were 143,769 FTE officers.

However, the claim that there are record numbers of police is missing important context.

Full Fact states: “The number of officers has not kept up with population growth since 2010, meaning that despite the increase, there are fewer officers per capita than there were in 2010.

“Police numbers also fell after 2010 to 123,189 in March 2019. They increased as part of the government’s 2019 pledge to recruit an additional 20,000 officers by March 2023.

“The recent increase in warranted officers has also been offset by a loss in the number of police staff and PCSOs. The latest Home Office figures show there were 244,497 FTE paid police workers in March 2010, a figure that is 10,665 higher than the equivalent for March 2023.”

3. “One of the most worrying trends right now is the rise in vaping among children: one in five children have used vapes”

Sunak told the conference that he was deeply concerned about the rise in vaping among children, claiming that one in five children have used vapes and announced a new policy to raise the age of smoking.

Yet Sunak’s claim that one in five children have used vaping is misleading. While Sunak’s claim is correct for children over the age of 11, it also includes all children who have ever tried vaping, as well as those who currently use electronic cigarettes. Around 4% of children are regular users who vape more than once a week.

Full Fact states: “According to a survey conducted earlier this year by the health charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), in March/April 2023 20.5% of children aged 11-17 in Great Britain had vaped at least once, with 11.6% having tried it once or twice and 7.6% considering themselves current users. Within that, 3.7% of children said they vaped more than once a week, and 3.9% vaped occasionally (less than once a week).

“The ASH survey showed discrepancies between age groups. For 11-15 year olds, 15% said they had vaped at least once in their lives and 4.6% were current users of vapes, compared to 34% of 16-17 year olds who had tried vaping and 15% of 16-17 year olds who are current users.

“The statistics broadly match figures from the NHS, which conducts a survey of pupils in Year 7 to 11, “mostly aged 11 to 15” every two years. Their latest survey, from 2021, found 22% of children in this age group had used a vape at least once, and 9% were current users, with about 4% using vapes at least once a week.”

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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