Child tax credits, cancer tests, and academies: factchecking Prime Minister's Questions

"Compared with when I became Prime Minister there are 390,000 fewer children in households where no-one works."—David Cameron

That's correct. There were 1.5 million children living in workless households in the UK in April to June 2014, down from 1.9 million at the same point in 2010.

That's a fall from 16% of children to 13%.

"The IFS have said that cutting £5bn from tax credits would mean working families losing on average £1,400 per year...It's the truth."—Harriet Harman

That's not quite right. The figures apply to 3.7 million low income families, rather than all working families. Not all of the families that would be affected are working, and the policy is not one that the government have announced; it's an illustrative example.

There are a number of elements that make up child tax credit. If the government decided to cut the payment for each child back to its 2003/04 level (adjusted for inflation), then it would save about £5 billion according to the IFS.

This would mean an average loss of £1,400 a year for 3.7 million low income families with children. You don't have to be working to claim child tax credit, and not all working families have children or claim child tax credit.

"Mr. Speaker, yesterday we heard that early referral for cancer tests could save 10,000 lives a year."—Jack Dromey

It's fair to say that earlier diagnosis of cancer could save thousands of lives. Putting a precise number on how many is difficult, however.

Research found that a combination of earlier diagnosis and better use of surgical interventions could have saved between 5,000 and 10,000 lives in the late nineties. It doesn't give an exact split on how many of these lives would be saved by earlier diagnosis alone, and we don't know how changes in diagnosis and in the patient population might have changed since.

"I am also convinced when you look at the figures that convertor academies are performing better than the local authority main schools"—David Cameron, 24 June 2015

We're not as convinced.

When it comes to secondary schools, there's mixed evidence as to whether converter academies (schools which were generally high performing and switched over to become an academy) improve faster than local authority schools.

Getting academy status made no difference to GCSE results in converter academies compared to local authority schools two years after opening, according to research by the National Foundation for Educational Research.

The other way to look at secondary school performance is by looking at Ofsted inspections, but there are difficulties with this comparison. For example, converter academies are the most likely to be good and outstanding, but that's to be expected because schools are more likely to convert to academies if they're performing well according to their exam results or Ofsted grade. So it's not surprising that they continue to be more likely to be judged outstanding compared to local authority schools.

We don't have much evidence for primary schools yet.

For more detailed information on performance comparisons of academies, see our briefing.