Fact check: PMQs and MP breakfast expenses

This round-up of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK’s largest fact checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.

Prime Minister’s Questions

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Conservative leader Rishi Sunak went head-to-head across the despatch box on Wednesday as Prime Minister’s Questions returned after the summer recess—and we fact checked a number of the claims made.

The Prime Minister said the government had found a “£22 billion black hole” in the public finances earlier this year.

The government first made this claim back in July, after a Treasury audit found that in the current year the “forecast overspend on departmental spending is expected to be £21.9 billion” above the totals set during the Spring Budget. This figure included extra spending on areas such as the asylum system, the transport budget and public sector pay.

The extent to which this was an unexpected “black hole” is disputed, however, with the Conservatives accusing Labour of making the claim to lay the ground for tax rises. After the chancellor Rachel Reeves first announced the £22 billion shortfall, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that many of the challenges Labour outlined were “entirely predictable”, but also that the in-year financial pressures identified did “genuinely appear to be greater than could be discerned from the outside”.

Mr Sunak meanwhile claimed that Labour inherited “the fastest growing economy in the G7” from his government.

This was a claim we heard many times during the general election campaign, based on data from the first quarter of 2024. But since then new data has been published, and Mr Sunak’s claim now seems to be based on GDP data for the first half of 2024. The UK economy grew by 0.7% in the first quarter, and 0.6% in the second quarter of the year—the highest combined rate in the G7 over this period.

It’s worth noting though that the UK’s annual growth last year was among the worst in the G7, and the UK has seen comparatively slower growth since the start of the pandemic than other G7 countries, except for Germany.

Mr Starmer also said that “800,000 pensioners are not taking up Pension Credit”. This figure is broadly correct.

Recently published government figures show that 1.4 million people currently claim Pension Credit, and that as many as 880,000 people are estimated to be eligible but don’t claim it.

Pensioners in England and Wales who do not receive Pension Credit or other qualifying means-tested benefits will no longer receive the Winter Fuel Payment from this winter.

MP breakfast expenses

Social media posts which say that Members of Parliament can “claim £50 expenses for a breakfast” are circulating once again.

This is a claim we’ve been fact checking for years. It’s not correct, as we first wrote back in 2020—but it keeps being made.

There is no specific breakfast allowance for MPs. MPs can claim some money for food if they spend a night away on parliamentary business, and their stay is neither in their constituency nor in London. But such claims are limited to £25 per night spent away and this covers all meals (and non-alcoholic drinks), not just breakfast.