FactCheck: the tale of Paddick's pad
Updated on 04 April 2008
Lib Dem mayoral candidate is asked how much he paid for his London home and gives two contrasting answers. FactCheck investigates.
The claim
"I bought it for £325,000."
Brian Paddick, Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate, 1 April 2008
The background
London's mayoral candidates went toe-to-toe this week over the issue of the capital's housing.
With more than 330,000 Londoners on social housing waiting lists, 57,000 households in temporary accommodation, and 3,000 people sleeping rough - it is an emotive subject.
At a hustings in Westminster the candidates were challenged to reveal how much they'd paid for their London homes.
Ken Livingstone priced his pad at "around £400,000 to £500,000", while Boris Johnson could only say his home cost "shed loads of money".
Lib Dem contender Brian Paddick said he bought his flat for a more modest £325,000. But is the former cop being consistent?
The analysis
When asked about his London home, Paddick told the hustings: "I bought it for £325,000".
Nothing unusual in that you might think, unless you had read the Independent's property section from the previous week.
The section featured an interview with Paddick, in which he talked about his riverside pad.
"My home is a one-bedroom flat on Albert Embankment in Vauxhall...I've lived in this flat since September, and I paid £425,000 for it."
Which leaves a £100,000 gap.
'[Paddick] was misquoted in the Independent - and he has the balance sheets to prove it.'The Paddick campaign
Cynics would suggest that Paddick had simply downplayed the price of his home in front of a housing-hungry audience - at an event organised by groups such as Shelter and Crisis - but his campaign team begged to differ.
Emily Walsh, a member of the campaign, told FactCheck: "He [Paddick] was misquoted in the Independent - and he has the balance sheets to prove it.
She added: "I don't think how much he paid for his flat is going to affect how people vote anyway."
That's it then, a simple case of the Independent getting its stats wrong. Or was it?
FactCheck asked the Independent whether it had made a mistake, and luckily the relevant Paddick interview was still on tape.
The newspaper said its recording had Paddick saying: "How much did I pay for the flat? I paid £425,000".
To cloud the waters further, a Land Registry search suggests that Paddick bought his home for £345,000. Either way the £325,000 boast seems dubious.
The verdict
Critics would say Paddick was just trying to secure cheap political points by knocking £100,000 off the price of his flat. His supporters would say he's just a bit vague with his figures. FactCheck thinks it's probably a bit of both.
But one thing seems clear - the Lib Dem candidate wasn't misquoted as claimed.
FactCheck rating: 4.0
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Every time a FactCheck article is published we'll give it a rating from zero to five.
The lower end of the scale indicates that the claim in question largerly checks out, while the upper end of the scale suggests misrepresentation, exaggeration, a massaging of statistics and/or language.
In the unlikely event that we award a 5 out of 5, our factcheckers have concluded that the claim under examination has absolutely no basis in fact.
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