When errors go viral: Commons Library looks into foreign aid email

Last year a viral email providing a stream of 'facts' about foreign aid found its way to MPs' inboxes. It took issue with what it saw as parties saying "we're broke" and "can't help our own seniors, veterans, orphans, homeless etc.", while spending "literally billions" outside the UK.

In response, this week the House of Commons Library did a spot of factchecking.

It found that in general the figures "do not tally with any official UK sources". For instance, in a list of countries the email provided as destinations for UK aid, one was 'Hamas'.

One thing it said the email did get right is that the UK spends billions of pounds on aid (£11.4 billion in 2013).

The Library originally analysed the figures last year, so that MPs could make sense of them. This week it updated the figures in light of the emails continuing to fly around.

It follows a similar email Full Fact looked into in 2011, which contained significant inaccuracies as well.