Politics Live

Last week we wrote about competing claims from senior Labour and Conservative politicians over what National Insurance contributions (NICs) are used for.

In an article published on 14 March covering some of these claims, the Daily Telegraph stated: “Contrary to popular belief, there is no National Insurance fund that is used to pay for pensions and the health service.”

This isn’t technically correct. While it's true that NICs don't entirely fund the welfare system and the NHS, there is a National Insurance Fund (NIF), the contents of which are formally separate from other tax revenue, and used to pay for social security benefits.

NICs are collected by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. A portion of this revenue is paid directly to the NHS, with the remainder paid into this fund.

That being said, the level of the NIF does not determine the amount spent on social security payments, and can be topped up by general taxation if it doesn’t cover social security payments in a given year. So while there is a separate National Insurance Fund, its existence doesn’t have any meaningful effect on how much money is spent on benefits and the NHS.

We’ve contacted the Telegraph for comment.

Readers have sent us leaflets from the Liberal Democrat candidates for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire, and Bicester and Woodstock, which say that “7.7 million people are on the NHS waiting list”. 

As we’ve often said before, this isn’t quite right. 

We’re not quite sure when the leaflets were printed, but the latest data on waits for non-emergency care with NHS England—which is what people usually mean by “the NHS waiting list”—shows that about 6.3 million people were waiting at the end of January.

Between them, these people were waiting for about 7.6 million courses of treatment. There have never been more than about 6.5 million individuals on this waiting list, but because some people are awaiting treatment for more than one thing, the number of cases involving them is always higher.

NHS England did not publish regular data on the number of people on the waiting list until last November. Now these figures are available, however, we think they should be used correctly.

The number of people and cases on the waiting list are both extremely high in the latest data, having fallen below the record levels reached in late 2023.

Full Fact is pleased to have secured a correction to a comment piece by the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

In the article published on 31 January in the Telegraph, Mr Sunak claimed that “18-week waits” in the NHS were “down by 90 per cent.”

However, as we pointed out at the time, 18-week waits for non-emergency NHS treatment in England had actually risen by 4-9% since the government made its pledge to reduce waiting lists.

When the claim was made, we invited the Telegraph to provide a comment for our fact check, before writing to both the Telegraph and Mr Sunak to request a correction. We sent a reminder to Mr Sunak, but he still did not respond. The Telegraph told us to go through their editorial complaints process.

The Telegraph has now amended the comment piece, added a correction note at the bottom, and included the correction in its online Corrections & Clarifications column.

In the correction, the Telegraph says that the mistake in the original comment piece was caused by “a production error”.

We’d like to thank the Telegraph for this correction. However, we are concerned that Mr Sunak did not reply to our request and that it took over a month for his article to be corrected.

During today’s Budget, the chancellor Jeremy Hunt said “debt is falling in line with our fiscal rules”. However, as we’ve written before about similar claims, and as others have pointed out today, debt is not currently falling—it is forecast to fall. 

The government’s fiscal rules state that underlying debt must be falling as a percentage of GDP between the fourth and fifth year of the forecast period. 

Underlying public sector net debt, which excludes the Bank of England’s debt and is the measure the government uses in its targets, is currently forecast to peak in 2026-27 and 2027-28 before falling, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). 

The OBR’s most recent forecast, published today following the Budget, says: “Public sector net debt (excluding the Bank of England) in the central forecast rises from 88.8 per cent of GDP this year to a peak of 93.2 per cent of GDP in 2027-28, before falling slightly to 92.9 per cent of GDP in 2028-29.” (The OBR forecasts that debt will first hit the peak of 93.2% of GDP in 2026-27.) 

After the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wrongly claimed “debt is falling” last November, the UK Statistics Authority warned this claim “may have undermined trust in the government’s use of statistics and quantitative analysis in this area”. 

2p or not 2p? That is the question which has dominated days of pre-Budget speculation, and appears to now have been answered, judging by the front pages of today’s newspapers. As the BBC also reports, the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is widely expected to cut National Insurance for workers by another 2p.

But that’s just one part of today’s announcement, which is always a big political moment but all the more so today with a general election looming. 

The Full Fact team will be monitoring events in Westminster throughout the day, starting with Prime Minister’s Questions at 12pm as usual. Mr Hunt’s Budget speech is expected to start around 12.30pm, and then around 1.30pm Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer will give his response, while at roughly the same time the full Budget documents are expected to be published on the Treasury website.

What can we expect? Well, if the 2p National Insurance cut is as trailed, the government may claim, as we’ve seen it do in relation to the similar 2p cut in last year’s Autumn Statement, that it will save the average worker around £450 a year. Our fact check on this previous claim found that it was true but didn’t tell the full story, because it didn’t take account of other tax changes including frozen income tax thresholds.

On Labour’s side, we may see some new version of its oft-repeated claim that there have been 25 tax rises since the last general election. As we’ve written before about that claim, it’s unclear how Labour reached that exact figure, as a list of the 25 tax rises includes some since 2019 but appears to omit others. The Institute for Fiscal Studies actually says it’s likely there have been hundreds of specific tax rises (and cuts) since 2019, and what’s more significant is that this is “the biggest tax-raising parliament in modern times”.

It’s likely there’ll be many other claims to check throughout the day though—and there’s always the possibility of a Budget ‘rabbit’ which means we’ll end the day talking about something entirely different. And while we’ll be monitoring Parliament, the media and social media, if you’ve spotted something you’d like us to check you can let us know here, or flag it to us on X (formerly Twitter) @FullFact. Stay tuned…

In advance of this week’s Budget, we’ve seen a claim that could confuse people coming up again. A post on X (formerly Twitter) from the account of the Conservative party says that the recent cut in the rate of National Insurance is “saving the average worker £450 per year”.

We have looked at this claim before and found that it’s missing important context. 

Although it is true that the NI reduction will mean someone on £35,000 a year, roughly the average full-time wage, will pay £450 less in National Insurance than if the rate had remained the same, this figure doesn’t account for other changes in their taxes. 

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), when viewed alongside ongoing freezes to the threshold at which people begin paying National Insurance contributions and income tax, the savings for someone on the average salary are substantially smaller, at around £130.

The IFS says there has been a “record-breaking increase” in tax revenues this Parliament, and that in the medium term the cuts in National Insurance offset “only about a quarter of the increase in the tax on labour income [wages]” from consecutive freezes of tax thresholds since March 2021.

If, as currently planned, the thresholds remain frozen until 2027/28, the IFS estimates the average worker will be paying around £440 a year more in direct tax at that point, compared with 2021.

Following the news overnight that Workers Party of Britain candidate George Galloway has won the by-election in Rochdale, we’ve seen some potentially confusing claims on social media about Labour’s defence of the seat.

In a pinned post on X (formerly Twitter) the Daily Telegraph claimed “George Galloway has won the Rochdale by-election, defeating the incumbent Labour MP”.

This isn’t quite right. The by-election in Rochdale was called following the death of the incumbent Labour MP, Sir Tony Lloyd, in January. So while Labour was the most recent incumbent party, there was no incumbent MP to contest the seat.

We’ve also seen some posts comparing Labour’s vote share of 7.7% in yesterday’s by-election to far higher vote shares won by the party in previous elections in the constituency.

Some of these posts have had responses from other users claiming there was no Labour candidate in the by-election. This is a bit complicated.

The Rochdale by-election was contested under a fairly unique set of circumstances after the Labour party’s decision to withdraw support for its chosen candidate, Azhar Ali, following comments he reportedly made about the 7 October attacks on Israel by Hamas.

Because this decision was made too late for the party to replace him as a candidate under electoral law, Mr Ali did remain on the ballot officially as a Labour party candidate, but did not have the support of the party during the rest of the election campaign.

So while the figure of 7.7% for Labour’s vote share is correct, it’s clearly not directly comparable with the party’s previous results in the constituency.

On Times Radio [1:54] on Wednesday shadow financial secretary to the Treasury James Murray MP said there have been “25 tax rises in this Parliament alone”.

It’s not the first time Mr Murray has made this claim, and he’s also not the only Labour politician to have said it.

As we wrote last month, it’s unclear how Labour arrived at the specific figure of 25 tax rises. While Labour still doesn’t appear to have publicly published its workings or reasoning, in January Full Fact was sent the list of 25 tax rises by a shadow Treasury minister who is a Labour peer. It includes a range of tax changes that have occurred since 2019, but seems to miss out others, such as the energy windfall tax or the temporary rise in National Insurance that occurred in 2022.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies told us that counting the number of specific tax rises “isn’t very interesting or meaningful”. It said there have technically been hundreds of tax rises (and reductions) since this parliament began at the end of 2019, and what’s more significant is that this is “the biggest tax-raising parliament in modern times”.

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions also saw Labour MP Sarah Owen challenged by the Prime Minister after she claimed the UK had seen “seven consecutive quarters of no growth”.

Ms Owen’s claim isn’t true of overall GDP, which has seen some periods of limited growth within the past seven quarters. But Ms Owen has since clarified on social media that she was referring to GDP per capita, though she didn’t specify this at the time.

Read our full fact check here.

At Prime Minister’s Questions earlier today, the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said inflation is “continuing to fall”. 

Inflation is measured by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in two main ways—CPI, which stands for Consumer Prices Index, which measures the change in the price of everyday goods and services, and CPIH, which measures this as well as owner-occupier housing costs and Council Tax. The ONS considers CPIH the more comprehensive measure of inflation. 

In recent years, CPI inflation reached a peak of 11.1% in October 2022, when CPIH inflation also peaked, at 9.6%. 

By both measures, inflation has fallen most months since October 2022. As of January 2024, the most recent month for which we have data, CPI inflation is 4%, while CPIH inflation is 4.2%. 

However, CPI inflation reached 4% in December 2023, slightly up on the previous month, and remained at this level in January. CPIH inflation reached 4.2% in November 2023, and also remained at this rate in December and January. 

So, while CPI inflation has fallen by 7.1 percentage points since October 2022, and CPIH has fallen 5.4 percentage points, both measures have levelled off over the last three months, so arguably aren’t quite “continuing to fall”. 

The ONS still produces inflation stats for another way of measuring inflation, the Retail Prices Index (RPI), which measures the change in consumer goods and services, including owner-occupier housing costs. RPI only covers private households and excludes the top 4% of households by income, as well as pensioner households who receive over 75% of their income from benefits. 

According to RPI figures, inflation also peaked in October 2022 at 14.2%, but has fallen since to 4.9% in January 2024. This measure shows inflation has fallen continuously since September 2023, but RPI inflation is no longer used as a national statistic “due to the shortcomings of the current approach”. 

We’ve written to Mr Sunak about this claim and will update our blog if we receive a response.