Today I've been giving evidence to the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee about the work of
@FactCheck
and how we address misinformation.
You can watch the session here:
How many A&E patients wait more than 12 hours between a decision to admit them to hospital and actually being admitted?
In August 2010, NHS England recorded one case of this. Not 100, not 1,000. Just one.
Last month, that figure was 29,317.
🚨NEW NHS ENGLAND STATS 🚨
How many people wait longer than 12 hours on a trolley for an emergency hospital bed?
In January 2011, it was 17 people.
In January 2024, it was 54,308 people.
This is my 6th year at
@FactCheck
and every winter England’s NHS has been in crisis.
So when I started looking at the latest stats I was expecting to do a story about history repeating itself.
But it’s not repeating. 2022 was *so* much worse.
I can prove it in one graph.🧵
NEW: Boris Johnson told the CBI this morning that Jeremy Corbyn would raise corporation tax rates to the 'highest levels in Europe'.
He's wrong. Read my latest
@FactCheck
:
Despite what James Cleverly said this morning, the government has *not* cleared the legacy asylum backlog.
I've been reporting this story for months. Get ready for a
@FactCheck
thread.
That story about the AI drone 'killing' its imaginary human operator? The original source being quoted says he 'mis-spoke' and it was a hypothetical thought experiment never actually run by the US Air Force, according to the Royal Aeronautical Society.
Boris Johnson has just repeated the claim that he’s seen no evidence of Russian interference in UK elections. That contradicts what he told the Russian Foreign Minister in 2017
#questiontime
#BBCQuestionTime
My
@FactCheck
:
The Conservatives have told
@FactCheck
that Sajid Javid 'misremembered' a homelessness stat. He seemed to take credit for a huge drop in statutory homelessness - but that actually happened under Labour. And under the Tories, it's gone up.
Read my latest:
How many A&E patients wait more than 12 hours between a decision to admit them to hospital and actually being admitted?
In August 2010, England's NHS recorded one case of this. Not 100, not 1,000. Just one.
In December 2022, it was 54,532.
Because nothing says ‘honouring the mother of feminism’ like a sexy naked lady.
First and only statue of Mary Wollstonecraft unveiled in North London today:
England’s NHS is now TEN times worse than in 2011 on four key measures:
🚑 Long A&E waits: 50,000 ➡️ 539,511
🛌 Long trolley waits: 8,000 ➡️ 135,182
🩺 Cancer referral waits +2 weeks: 3,700 ➡️ 51,919
👨🏽⚕️ Long elective care waits: 243,000 ➡️ 2,602,833
My
@FactCheck
analysis:
Rishi Sunak said at
#PMQs
that school buildings "wasn't even worthy of a single mention in [Keir Starmer's] so-called landmark speech on education this summer".
Here's an extract from Keir Starmer's education speech on 6 July:
Shaun Bailey says he'll be 'Saving each London household £307 – by reversing Sadiq Khan’s 10% council tax hike.'
But the tax rise in question costs £32. Read my latest
@FactCheck
for the full analysis:
The government's new "Benefits of Brexit" report includes four policies that could have happened when the UK was still in the EU. In fact, two of them did.
My latest
@FactCheck
:
If there were a general election tomorrow based on YouGov's latest poll:
🔴Labour would win a 480 seat majority
🔵The Conservatives would only have *three* MPs.
(Source: Electoral Calculus. But remember, it's only one poll)
A man is 230 times more likely to be the victim of rape in adulthood than he is to be falsely accused of rape.
That’s according to the best available data.
My latest FactCheck:
The NHS ‘trolley waits’ situation is significantly worse now than it was even a year ago.
Last July, ‘only’ 2,208 patients waited more than 12 hours between decision to admit and admission. There’s since been a thirteenfold rise.
NEW: Absolutely eye-watering figures from NHS England this morning.
The number of people waiting more than 12 hours on a trolley for a proper hospital bed has risen 44% in a single month.
The King’s Fund think tank says missed A&E targets are about pressures in other parts of the system. There aren’t enough free beds on wards, it’s taking too long to discharge patients out of hospital, and there are staff shortages.
But it’s not just Covid. England’s NHS was in a bad state before the pandemic.
My analysis finds that by 2019:
🔹long elective care waits were 2.7 times worse than in 2011
🔹cancer referrals, 4.8 times worse
🔹A&E waits, 5.7 times worse
🔹trolley waits, 8.6 times worse
I’m very sad to say that my kind, hilarious, thoughtful, clever dad John Lee died suddenly on Monday. He wouldn’t have known anything about it. He had a happy life with my mum and me. The three of us were best friends. We will love and miss him forever.
At today's
#PMQs
Boris Johnson appeared to suggest that yesterday's 'New Deal' would mean £34bn more injected into the NHS and £14bn more for schools. That's not the case.
Read my latest
@FactCheck
for the full analysis:
We can reveal the Conservatives spent thousands on Facebook ads displayed over a million times in key Labour marginals - but they contain a basic error, which the party admitted after we pointed it out.
Read the full
@FactCheck
from
@EdHowker
and me:
And it’s not just trolley waits that are up.
As I reported in May, the number of people waiting over 4 hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged from England A&Es has risen tenfold since 2011.
What’s going on?
It’s not about the total number of patients in A&E, which is only 0.1% higher than last July. That wouldn’t explain a 1,300% increase in +12 hour waits.
Nadine Dorries said that coronavirus tests “won’t cut the number of deaths” or “stop them catching coronavirus”. That contradicts statements from the head of the World Health Organisation and England's Chief Medical Officer.
My latest
@FactCheck
:
Despite what James Cleverly said this morning, the government has *not* cleared the legacy asylum backlog.
I've been reporting this story for months. Get ready for a
@FactCheck
thread.
How many A&E patients wait more than 12 hours between a decision to admit them to hospital and actually being admitted?
In August 2010, NHS England recorded one case of this. Not 100, not 1,000. Just one.
In October 2022, it was 43,792.
A&E
NHS England has a target to see, transfer or discharge A&E patients within 4 hours.
My analysis finds that in 2011, an average of 50,000 patients a month waited more than that.
In 2022, it was 539,511.
CANCER
NHS England has a target that says patients referred for suspected cancer should see a specialist within 2 weeks.
My analysis finds that in 2011, around 3,700 patients waited longer than that on average each month.
In 2022, it was 51,919.
TROLLEY WAITS
That is, people waiting +4 hours between a decision to admit them to hospital and actually being admitted.
My analysis finds that on average in 2011, around 8,000 patients a month waited this long or more.
In 2022, it was 135,182.
The years since Covid hit show the steepest rise, notwithstanding an on-paper improvement in 2020 as people stayed away from emergency medicine during lockdown.
(It was never against lockdown rules to seek treatment - people just avoided the NHS thinking they were doing good.)
On the elective care backlog the Nuffield Trust told me it “cannot be solely attributed to Covid-19 but instead is a predictable consequence of the collision between a pandemic and a health system already stretched beyond its limits”.
Basically, demand outstrips supply.
Matt Hancock said "when I first asked for a list of all the elderly care homes, we did not have one". But a list does exist and it seems to have been online throughout the pandemic.
My latest
@FactCheck
:
Challenged on the Covid crisis in social care, Matt Hancock said “we did not have” a list of all elderly care homes early on. But as
@FactCheck
has found, there is a list and it seems to have been online throughout the pandemic. Read the full analysis:
I’ve focussed on 4 of the key targets that the NHS sets itself: A&E, “trolley waits”, cancer referrals, and elective care.
We’re going to track progress on each of these since 2011.
ELECTIVE CARE
That’s treatments including hip replacements and cataract surgery.
My analysis finds that on average in 2011, there were 243,000 people who'd been on the waiting list longer than 18 weeks at the end of each month.
In 2022, it was 2,602,833.
@IsabelOakeshott
There are 843 parking spaces at Oxford Parkway station.
According to the ONS, just over 4% of the population of England have a blue badge.
On that basis, one might reasonably expect 36 disabled bays in a car park of that size.
Boris Johnson said the government sent ‘4 more mobile testing units’ to Leicester ‘shortly’ after 8 June.
But it seems it was 10 days after 8 June before the first new site opened and 21 days before 4 new sites were added.
My latest
@FactCheck
:
NEW NHS STATS: The number of people waiting more than 4 hours in England A&Es has jumped by +100,000 in a single month.
Here's how those figures have changed since 2010:
Boris Johnson said the government increased the National Living Wage 'last time by a record amount'.
But the most recent rise was the lowest since the policy was introduced.
My latest
@FactCheck
:
In the next tweet, I’m going to put all those figures in a single graph. I’ve indexed all the figures to 2011.
Anything below that line means things are better than they were then. Anything above means things are worse.
Tonight’s
@Channel4News
is an NHS special, looking at the state of the health service in England.
Throughout this week, we’ll also be looking at Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Stay tuned.
A prominent supporter of Jeremy Corbyn with detailed knowledge of Labour's NEC told us some members receive ‘lesser sanctions’ for antisemitism - appearing to contradict Mr Corbyn's claim that antisemites 'are either suspended or expelled'. My
@FactCheck
:
I've been looking at how England's NHS has fared over the last 13 years.
In 2011, around 11 patients a month on average waited 12 hours on a trolley for a hospital bed.
In 2023, that figure was nearly 35,000.
Did austerity kill 120,000 people? That was the claim from commentator Ash Sarkar and shared by Jeremy Corbyn last night.
But the study it's based on does not prove that austerity actually caused the estimated 'excess deaths'. My latest
@FactCheck
:
Boris Johnson just said 'the amount we invested in the NHS [pre-pandemic] was more than any time in modern memory, a £34bn package'.
But as I've reported
@FactCheck
before, it's £23.5bn after inflation and might not be the largest in modern memory.
In August, Boris Johnson said the UK would relocate 5,000 Afghans "this year."
Yesterday, the government revealed that the scheme has only resettled one family so far.
My latest
@FactCheck
:
In August 2021, Boris Johnson told parliament that the UK would relocate 5,000 Afghans “this year.”
But as of yesterday, the scheme in question has only resettled a single family.
Read the full
@FactCheck
analysis:
Johnson said today he'd seen 'absolutely no evidence' of 'any Russian interference in UK democratic processes'
But that contradicts what he told the Russian Foreign Minister in 2017. Read my latest
@FactCheck
:
Matt Hancock said today 'at first we thought that this virus didn’t pass on if you didn’t have symptoms'. But SAGE warned of asymptomatic transmission in January 2020.
My latest
@FactCheck
:
Footage of turbulence knocking a flight attendant off her feet is being shared online.
But it is not from today's Singapore Airlines incident. It's from a 2019 flight to Basel.
EXC: I've found that the government failed to follow its own transparency guidelines on over 200 PPE contracts worth nearly £6bn in total.
Guidelines say it should publish details within 30 days. In some cases, it took over 200.
@FactCheck
analysis:
Fixed Term Parliaments Act says Johnson needs 2/3 of MPs to vote for an election
Alternatively, govt could use one-line bill. Only need a simple majority (50%+1), but would be amendable
Guarantees against no deal and/or votes for 16-17 year olds would likely be tacked on
But the pain would be spread differently by the parties. On average per year:
🟠LIB DEMS
Poorest households would gain £565, richest lose £1,042
🔴LABOUR
Poorest lose £40, richest lose £1,042
🔵CONSERVATIVES
Poorest lose £148, richest gain £198
Source: IFS
Boris Johnson's first cabinet is disproportionately:
🔹Male — 76%
🔹Privately educated — 64% vs 7% of UK
🔹Oxbridge degree-holding — 55% vs <1% of UK
But on one measure — ethnicity — the new frontbench looks more like Britain. My latest
@FactCheck
:
Boris Johnson said Scotland has "the highest taxes in Europe". It's not clear what he means by that, but on income tax, Scotland ranks about middle in the EU.
He may have meant to say "in the UK" — but even then, it's complicated. My latest
@FactCheck
:
Priti Patel said she'd tripled cash to tackle violence against women compared to "any other two-year period".
But new Home Office data reveals the claim only applies to two-year periods since 2011.
My latest
@FactCheck
:
Boris Johnson refers to the Afghan resettlement scheme here.
In August, he said the government would resettle 5,000 people through the scheme in 2021.
As of 6 January 2022, the scheme had resettled just *one* family.
My
@FactCheck
:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson denies the allegation that he prioritised the evacuation of Pen Farthing's animals over people during Britain's evacuation from Afghanistan.
Read more here:
A government spokesperson told me that the current challenges in the NHS are shared around the UK and Europe, and are due to a combination of Covid, Strep A, flu and the effects of the pandemic.
In 2018 I reported for
@FactCheck
that the number of people waiting more than four hours in English A&E departments had risen 600% since 2010. The graph looked like this:
Michael Gove said this morning that the Brexit transition period could not be extended. But the government's withdrawal agreement says it can.
My latest
@FactCheck
:
Jeremy Corbyn said holding an election on 12 December is 'odd for many reasons – it’s so near Christmas, it’s after universities finish their terms'
But not one of the 40 largest universities (ranked by no. of UK students) will have finished term by 12 Dec
Source: HESA
The page is for a fake product on a German barcode catalogue.
It’s listed under ‘trash bags’ and the 'manufacturer' is ‘UK Conservative Party’. The ‘further information’ section says ‘Full of Lies’.
Seems to have been created on the day the poster was launched (3 Dec 2019).
Thrilled to have made my TV debut tonight on
@Channel4News
.
I’m reporting on my latest
@FactCheck
analysis, which estimates 52,000 unvaccinated NHS England staff are at risk of losing their jobs.
NHS England stands to lose tens of thousands of staff when the deadline for people to be fully vaccinated against Covid is up on April 1.
FactCheck’s
@lee_georgina
crunches the numbers.
Rishi Sunak said today in Parliament that "rape convictions actually dropped" while Keir Starmer was in charge of the CPS.
But CPS data shows the number of convictions *increased* during Starmer's tenure (2008 to 2013).
Rishi Sunak just said that when Keir Starmer led the CPS "rape convictions...dropped". Starmer replied that the PM "knows that's going to be fact-checked".
Indeed, I
@FactCheck
-ed this claim when Dominic Raab made it in 2022.
Here was my verdict then:
#PMQs
@FactCheck
Boris Johnson has asked the Queen to prorogue parliament for up to 34 days.
That's longer than any prorogation period for at least 40 years. Since 2010, the average suspension period has been 8 days.
✨NEW FLOWCHART ✨
Tory MPs could block Boris Johnson from staying on as a caretaker Prime Minister if they wanted to. But they risk triggering a general election.
I've made a flowchart of how it could play out:
Rishi Sunak just said that when Keir Starmer led the CPS "rape convictions...dropped". Starmer replied that the PM "knows that's going to be fact-checked".
Indeed, I
@FactCheck
-ed this claim when Dominic Raab made it in 2022.
Here was my verdict then:
#PMQs
Okay, it's
#BrexitEve
. Here are some of the biggest broken promises, half-truths and dodgy predictions of the whole saga — from all sides of the debate.
Read my latest
@FactCheck
here:
Thrilled to say I've been appointed Senior Journalist overseeing FactCheck at
@Channel4News
. The legendary
@paddyworrall
leaves big shoes.
We've got some exciting projects in the pipeline! Make sure to follow
@FactCheck
and check out:
As I reported earlier this month, the number of people waiting +12 hours on a hospital trolley for an emergency bed was 3,000 times higher in 2023 than in 2011.
Read my
@FactCheck
analysis here:
And the *proportion* of patients waiting +4 hours is up too. It went from about 2.5% in 2011 to 24% in 2022.
Bear in mind the NHS England target is to keep this figure below 5%.
Dido Harding said 'none of us were able to predict' virus mutation and the new variant.
But we knew by mid-2020 that mutations were already happening and scientists warned variants could emerge to change the course of the pandemic.
My
@FactCheck
: