Boris Johnson was today clashing with Keir Starmer for his final time as Tory leader.
The Prime Minister will step down on September 6 after his successor is chosen in a Tory ballot.
And Parliament goes into recess tomorrow, meaning whoever takes the crown will do the next Prime Minister’s Questions on September 7.
Mr Johnson was immensely popular at PMQs with many Tory MPs, rabble-rousing and getting his party to jeer and joke about Keir Starmer.
But with that brash style came a string of claims that were inaccurate, some of which critics say were deliberate lies.
Those repeated false helped fuel the swell against him in his own party that eventually led to his downfall.
As the era of Boris Johnson PMQs comes to an end today, we look at 10 of the biggest false or misleading claims he has made at PMQs over the last three years.
‘There was no party’
Battered by the first Partygate claims in the Mirror, the PM said on 1 December 2021: “All guidance was followed in No10”.
A week later he added: “I have been repeatedly assured since these allegations emerged that there was no party”.
Those claims turned out to be untrue, with Scotland Yard issuing more than 100 fines for Covid law-breaking in No10 and Whitehall.
And Boris Johnson is accused of deliberately lying after he was pictured raising a glass at one event in the Sue Gray report. He attended around six lockdown gatherings in No10.
The Privileges Committee is investigating whether he committed contempt of Parliament by misleading MPs.
‘More people in work’
On 20 April 2022 the PM said there were “more people in work than there were before the pandemic”.
He has repeatedly made this claim at PMQs and continued making it, even after accepting a correction from the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA).
While people on payrolls were up since pre-Covid, the number of people in jobs overall was still down by 580,000 at the time, compared to December 2019-February 2020.
While UK employment was 75.5% in April 2022, that was still 1.1 points lower than pre Covid.
The difference between payroll and employment is because payroll statistics do not capture the self-employed.
UKSA chair Sir David Norgrove had already told the PM “it is wrong to claim that there are now more people in work than before the pandemic began”.
’We are building 40 new hospitals’
On 19 January 2022 the PM said: “We are building 40 new hospitals.” He said this repeatedly and it was a 2019 election pledge to build them by 2030.
But the definition of “new” includes major redevelopments or refurbishments of an existing site or a new wing of an existing hospital.
Of the 40 ‘new hospitals’, 32 locations were announced in October 2020 and the remaining eight sites are due to be confirmed later this year.
On top of this, the government decided to include another eight projects that were already approved under the previous government, bringing the total to 48 - or 40 already announced.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, told the BBC : “I think the general public understand a new hospital is a brand new hospital, in those terms it is misleading.”
He added “it looks as though no new hospitals will be fully built by the next election.” No10 disputed this claiming six will be completed by 2024.
‘Keir Starmer voted 48 times to go back into EU’
On 9 February 2022 Boris Johnson said: “The Leader of the Opposition voted 48 times to go back into the EU - yes he did”.
The Full Fact independent fact-checking website has said this is “not correct”.
It appears to be based on the fact Keir Starmer took part in 48 Commons votes related to Brexit.
But some of these were not about whether Britain should be part of the EU, and 45 of them took place before Britain had left the EU.
Keir Starmer supported a second referendum on Brexit in 2019, and said he would campaign for and vote Remain if it was allowed to take place. But since Brexit happened he’s confirmed he would not reverse it.
Keir Starmer ‘would have kept us in lockdown’
Boris Johnson said on 30 March 2022: ”This is the Leader of the Opposition who would have kept this country in lockdown.”
He has repeatedly made similar claims specifying December 2021 when the Omicron variant surged.
Before Christmas 2021, the Labour leader welcomed "additional measures" to curb Omicron rates, and some of his shadow ministers made other calls - but Sir Keir did not call for a lockdown.
Instead, before Christmas 2021 Labour’s leader said: "We've got a government that are hinting at further restrictions but they're more concerned and tied up with party management at the moment than it is with public health.
"The question on my lips and I think on the public's lips is where is the prime minister?"
One time Keir Starmer definitely did demand a lockdown was in autumn 2020 - and Boris Johnson eventually caved and obeyed those calls a few weeks later.
He also opposed the lifting of “all restrictions” in July 2021 but was not calling for full lockdown.
‘Everybody is getting their passport within four to six weeks’
Boris Johnson told MPs on 25 May 2022: "To the best of my knowledge, everybody is getting their passport within four to six weeks."
But ministers later admitted 1.4% of applications were not even being completed even within 10 weeks in April and May.
The PM rolled back the following month and claimed 91% of people were getting their passports within six weeks.
Hours before the final PMQs, a Passport Office chief admitted around 50,000 people were waiting longer than 10 weeks.
Passport Office director Thomas Greig told MPs around 550,000 applications were being processed at the end of last month, and of these around 10% of applicants had waited more than 10 weeks.
‘We’re the fastest-growing economy in the G7’
He told PMQs on 22 February 2022: “We are the fastest-growing economy in the G7 as a result of the measures that this Government have taken.”
Technically yes - at the time, the UK’s GDP was forecast to grow by 4.7% in 2022, which was the highest of any G7 country. But that was by no means the full picture.
UK GDP also fell by 9.4% in 2020 according to the IMF, the worst of any G7 country - which meant it then bounced back faster too.
According to the House of Commons Library, UK GDP was still down by 1.5% in July-September 2021 compared to pre-pandemic levels.
This was the second-worst of any G7 country at the time, behind Canada, Italy, Germany, the Eurozone, France and the US.
The Commons Library also warned these figures "are not 100% comparable" across countries "due to differences in how output in the education and health sectors is calculated."
‘He spent most of his time failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile’
The flailing Prime Minister tried to associate Labour ’s leader with the notorious paedophile in an outburst slammed even by his own MPs.
On 31 January 2022 he said ex-director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer “spent most of his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, as far as I can make out”.
Sir Keir led the Crown Prosecution Service when it decided not to prosecute Savile in 2009 due to insufficient evidence, a decision it later apologised for.
But the Full Fact website investigated in 2020 and found it had never actually been suggested that Sir Keir was personally involved in the decision.
Instead, the CPS said: “The reviewing lawyer at the time set out their own reasons for the decisions they took”. Sir Keir later said “it’s a slur, it’s untrue, it’s desperate”.
‘Roman Abramovich is already facing sanctions’
This is a rare example of a claim not only being corrected, but coming to pass later on.
The Prime Minister claimed on 22 February 2022 that the Chelsea FC owner was “already facing sanctions”.
In a rare move, Downing Street admitted the PM “mis-spoke” in this instance and he formally corrected the record.
Mr Johnson said in a written ministerial statement to Parliament: “Roman Abramovich has not been the subject of targeted measures.”
Roman Abramovich was then hit with sanctions nearly three weeks later, so it’s possible he let slip it was being discussed behind the scenes.
‘Jeremy Corbyn was calling incessantly for a general strike’
For a final edition we take you back to his very first PMQs on 4 September 2019.
Attacking Jeremy Corbyn, the PM declared: “He's calling incessantly for a general strike."
At the time we could not find evidence Mr Corbyn had been calling for a general strike at all in recent months, let alone "incessantly".
Backbench Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle did call for one the previous week - and more significantly, shadow cabinet office minister Laura Smith called for one at an event in 2018.
But at the time of the comments, Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long Bailey insisted: “We’re certainly not advocating general strikes as Labour Party policy."
