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.
Migrant returns
At Prime Minister’s Questions on December 4, Sir Keir Starmer claimed: “9,400 people who have no right to be here have been returned. That is a 30% increase on the numbers of last year.”
The 9,400 figure seems to refer to the number of enforced and voluntary returns between 5 July and 28 October 2024 of people with no right to be in the UK — a figure published by the Home Office in an ad-hoc data release on November 4. But the Home Office does not appear to have published the corresponding figure for the same period in 2023, which means we’re unable to verify the second part of Sir Keir’s claim.
This is not the first time we’ve been unable to find published data to support a claim the Prime Minister has made about returns. In October the Home Office published ad-hoc returns figures after Full Fact asked about unpublished data used by Sir Keri in his Labour Party conference speech.
When Full Fact asked the Home Office about Sir Keir’s recent claim, it said it could only point us to its latest published data—which does not appear to substantiate the second part of his claim—and directed us to Number 10. Number 10 did not respond to our request for comment.
The ad-hoc data published on November 4 does not give a figure for overall returns between July 5 2023 and October 28 2023, or state what the increase in that number has been. And a new set of ad-hoc data published Sunday shows there were 13,460 enforced and voluntary returns between July 5 and December 7 2024, but again does not give a comparative figure for the same period in 2023.
The latest regular statistics, meanwhile, show that between July 1 and September 30 2024 there were a total of 8,308 enforced and voluntary returns—a 16% increase compared with the same period in 2023.
Ministers should provide evidence for what they say, and ensure 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. As things stand, we’re simply unable to say from the available data whether the second part of Sir Keir’s claim was correct.
Smoking stats
In a debate in Parliament on the Tobacco and Vapes Bill last month, Health Secretary Wes Streeting claimed “most” young smokers “will not be able to break their addiction”. He also claimed: “For two in three of those young people, the habit they are beginning today will eventually kill them.”
However, neither claim is supported by the evidence.
When Full Fact asked the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to provide a source for the claim “most will not be able to break their addiction”, it pointed to data showing a success rate for stopping of roughly 27% among those who tried to quit in 2024. This was based on a monthly survey conducted by pollsters Ipsos Mori of adults aged 16 and over in England.
But this does not mean smokers who failed will never be able to quit. It simply means they did not quit successfully at that point. The same survey data shows around 38% of those polled tried to stop smoking in 2024.
In fact, the data suggests the majority of people do successfully quit. According to the Office for National Statistics, 71% of over-16s who have ever been regular smokers were not currently smoking in 2023. This proportion has more than doubled since the 1970s.
The DHSC also told us that Mr Streeting’s claim that “two in three” young people will be “eventually” killed by their smoking habit was based on a study published in 2015.
But that study actually found that up to two-thirds of deaths among current smokers in Australia could be attributed to smoking. This means that two-thirds of everyone who was still a smoker when they died likely did so because of the habit. It does not mean that two-thirds of all smokers are killed by smoking.
AI ‘Syria’ image
An image is being shared on social media with claims it shows a prisoner found underground in Syria, but it is not a real photo and was created using artificial intelligence.
In the image, a bearded man can be seen looking up fearfully from what appears to be an underground passage. A post that has since been deleted shared the image with the caption: “A prisoner was just found deep underground in Syria. His expression says it all. He never expected to be found….” Screenshots of this post have been shared elsewhere.
Genuine videos have been shared of prisoners being released. But this particular image was shared online before the Assad regime was toppled.
The image is a screenshot from a video which shows a man emerging from a hole seemingly holding some kind of large spider. The video is clearly AI, as the hands holding the spider are not attached to the man’s body. It was shared on December 4 with a caption which ended “#ai”.
