Fact checkers had to set the record straight

Oliver Dowden stood in for Rishi Sunak today and he will be again next week, throwing into further scrutiny the prime minister’s terrible PMQs attendance record.

Facing Angela Rayner, Dowden threw his defences of the Tory party’s record at the House, however his claims have come under scrutiny from multiple angles for being incorrect and misleading.

Full Fact, the campaigns team of independent fact checkers, issued two corrections following the PMQs today. Firstly, was a claim by Dowden that the NHS waiting lists are ‘coming down’. Whilst some waiting lists, such as patients waiting over 18 months for a treatment, have fallen, the overall number of cases of waiting in England are at a record high.

Rishi Sunak has also attempted to make this claim along with other official government announcements, which is hard to swallow when official statistics put the number of cases for consultant-led treatment at 7.42 million at the end of April..

Awkwardly for them, this morning health minister Maria Caulfield said that NHS waiting lists could go up even further. No. 10 has since said that cutting long waiting times will take priority over cutting the NHS waiting list.

Secondly the fact checkers pulled up on another claim made by Dowden that the government had been ‘cutting taxes’ for national living wage earners by doubling the personal allowance.

Citing a similar claim made by the deputy prime minster last month, where he said minimum...

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