FactCheck: dodgy claims of 2008
Updated on 18 December 2008
A selection of our favourite questionable political claims and suspect spin - as debunked by FactCheck.
Selective use of statistics, dodgy spin and counterspin, or just bare-faced slips of the tongue? Dodgy claims are not just the province of the government machine: politicians of all colours can be guilty of bending the facts to fit their take on the world.
Channel 4 News's impartial FactCheck service scrutinises political claims to try to get to the truth behind the sound bites; below are 10 of our favourite FactChecks this year.
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Balls and the F word
"We don't use the phrase 'failing schools'. I have never called these schools 'failing schools'."
Ed Balls, schools secretary, September 2008
Teachers and parents don't take too kindly to politicians slamming their efforts - and when talking about plans to improve the lowest-performing schools in the country, Ed Balls claims the phrase "failing schools" is not one the government uses. It's just a shame he didn't tell his boss.
FactCheck: did Balls say the F word?
Counting the cameras
"A CCTV camera for every 14 people."
David Davis MP, former Conservative shadow home secretary, June 2008
The crusader of Haltemprice and Howden waged a civil liberties battle this summer, one of his targets being the Big-Brotheresque CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK. But that decidedly dubious statistic comes from a six-year-old paper based on just two London streets.
FactCheck: how many CCTV cameras
A temporary tax?
"We were always clear [the 10p tax rate] was a short-term measure."
James Purnell, work and pensions secretary, May 2008
Right in the middle of the row over the scrapping of the 10p rate of income tax, the government suddenly started to claim this starter rate had only ever been intended as a temporary fix. This would be the same 10p tax rate that was described as a long-term objective in their 1997 election manifesto...
FactCheck: temporary 10p tax?
Statistical poverty
"The number of people in deep poverty has risen by 900,000 since 1997."
George Osborne, Conservative shadow chancellor, August 2008
So the Tories never tire of telling us. Osborne is quoting an independent figure - but the authors, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, caution that it is far from a certain statistic because of the comparatively small number of people at the bottom of the income spectrum, many of whom seem to be spending a lot more money than they should actually have.
FactCheck: more in severe poverty?
Tory boom and bust
"I actually said, 'No more Tory boom and bust'."
Gordon Brown, prime minister, October 2008
The economy is struggling after years of growth - and the former chancellor tells an interviewer he only claimed to have ended "Tory" boom and bust. But his public statements and speeches show otherwise.
Mind you, Brown's Conservative counterpart David Cameron is also guilty of some linguistic revisionism of his own - such as when he backtracked over his use of the totemic phrase "broken society" in September.
FactCheck: no more boom and bust?
FactCheck: partly broken society?
Trafficking untruth
"There's nothing being closed down because of lack of funds - in fact there's increasing funds going in to [combating trafficking]..."
Harriet Harman, women's minister and deputy Labour leader, November 2008
Harriet Harman's claim sits uneasily with the fact that government funding for a specialist anti-people trafficking police unit has just been withdrawn, forcing it to shut. And figures for anti-trafficking funding more generally were far harder to come by than her claim suggests.
FactCheck: human trafficking cuts
Boris and the bendy buses
"It's absolutely true that if you are going to bring back a Routemaster, or have a new Routemaster, you would need a conductor with them... it would cost £8mn to have conductors on each of these buses per year."
Boris Johnson, Conservative London mayoral candidate, February 2008
In his campaign to run London, Boris Johnson pledged to scrap bendy buses in favour of the return of the smaller Routemaster, which has a conductor as well as a driver.
But BoJo's team had seriously underestimated the cost, which looks to be well over £100mn once you took into account the not-so-small matters of 24-hour service and the extra capacity the scrapped bendies have.
FactCheck: Boris's bus black hole
Paddick's sinking property price
"I bought it for £325,000."
Brian Paddick, Lib Dem London mayoral candidate, April 2008
So claimed Paddick (pre-I'm a Celebrity jungle-dwelling) when he was asked how much his home cost at a mayoral hustings organised by the likes of Crisis and Shelter.
So why did the Independent's property section the week before carry a "me and my flat" article in which Paddick appeared to say his riverside pad had in fact set him back the rather tidier sum of £425,000?
FactCheck: the tale of Paddick's pad
The sharp edge of statistics
"The number of teenagers admitted to hospital with knife wounds fell by 27 per cent in nine tackling knives action programme police force areas."
Home office press release, December 2008
Maybe, maybe not: the government's stats watchdog took the unusual step of complaining about Jacqui Smith's department's "premature" and "selective" release of statistics that appeared to show a knife crime crackdown was working. The press release contains a number of other statistical boasts which tell us very little.
FactCheck: knife crime stats
The £40,000 question
"After 2011, when national insurance goes up, no one [earning] under £40,000 will be paying more because I'm increasing the starting point at which you pay national insurance."
Alistair Darling, chancellor of the exchequer, December 2008
Labour claims no one earning less than £40,000 will be left worse off by tax increases set out in December's pre-budget report. This is only true if you compare the 2011 picture with the picture in April 2008, not with the picture in December, when the changes were announced.
FactCheck: the £40,000 question
