Fact check: Four claims from Labour conference

This roundup 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.

Immigration returns

Discussing immigration in his speech on Tuesday at the Labour party conference, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said there has been a “23% increase in returns of people who have no right to be here”, compared with last summer.

There is no published data to support this claim, which means we’re unable to verify it. However Full Fact has confirmed that it’s based on as-yet unpublished government immigration data (though the exact time frame the figure refers to is unclear).

Ministers and political leaders should provide evidence for what they say and it’s important that happens in this case. They should ensure that any statistics and data they rely on to back up their claims are provided publicly in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics or relevant guidance.

In a recent blog, the Office for Statistics Regulation said that it doesn’t actively monitor claims from politicians during party conference season, but added: “In instances where a statement makes specific reference to statistics which aren’t in the public domain, we would expect producers to follow our intelligent transparency guidance for responding to unplanned releases of data.”

We’ve contacted Number 10 to ask whether the government plans to publish this data in line with the above guidance.

The latest published data on immigration returns shows that in the three months from April to June this year a total of 12,801 returns were made, of which 5,374 were voluntary returns, 1,821 were enforced returns and 5,606 people were refused entry to the UK at port. This total is 3.7% higher than the number of returns made over the same period in 2023.

Onshore wind

Mr Starmer also claimed in his speech that a “ban” on onshore wind had been “lifted”, and deputy PM Angela Rayner used similar language in her own speech on Sunday.

Planning rules introduced in 2015, which Labour has now reversed, were often described as a “de-facto ban” because they resulted in a substantial decrease in applications for onshore wind sites. But there was no formal ban as such on onshore wind farms, and a limited number of onshore wind turbines have been built in recent years.

‘£22 billion black hole’

Throughout the conference we heard a familiar claim from senior Labour politicians, including Mr Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves, about a “£22 billion black hole” in the public finances.

As we’ve written before, this claim is based on a Treasury audit published in July which found that “forecast overspend on departmental spending is expected to be £21.9 billion” above the totals set out in the previous government’s Spring Budget.

The figure includes several “unfunded policy decisions” made by the previous government as well as £11-12 billion in higher-than-expected public sector spending on pay, even before newly announced pay rises are taken into account.

The extent to which the economic landscape inherited by Labour was unexpected is disputed, however.

In July Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson said many of the challenges outlined were “entirely predictable”, though he also said “the extent of the in-year funding pressures does genuinely appear to be greater than could be discerned from the outside”.

House building

Finally, Ms Rayner claimed in an interview at the start of the conference that house building numbers have “fallen off a cliff”.

It’s not clear which of the various statistics relating to house building Ms Rayner was referring to with this comment. Some measures do show a marked recent fall, though we have different bits of data covering different time periods, and the figures need context.

For example, there has been a 41% year-on-year drop in the number of new homes started in England in the first quarter of this year, but this may partly reflect a peak last year linked to new regulatory standards.