Full Fact confirms Boris Johnson made "untrue claims" on child poverty
30 July 2020, 14:55
Full Fact verifies that Boris Johnson made "untrue claims"
Fact-checking body Full Fact verifies that the Prime Minister has made "untrue claims" about the UK's level of child poverty on multiple occasions.
The Prime Minister has been untruthful about child poverty figures, the UK Statistics Authorities for Statistics Regulation has confirmed.
The watchdog found he made "incorrect claims about the level of child poverty under the Conservatives."
Will Moy, the chief of fact-checking body Full Fact, told LBC confirmed this happened on multiple occasions, as they fact check PMQs each week.
"Back in December and twice in June we saw occasions when the Prime Minister made a claim about poverty which we checked out, which we found to be wrong.
"A campaign group has raised that with the Office of Statistics Regulation whose job it is to get the Government and others to use statistics fairly and honestly and accurately," Mr Moy said.
The Government "agree" that the Prime Minister was wrong and the people who brief the him have been told, according to the campaign group.
Mr Moy pointed out that poverty is subjective, thus very hard to measure, however "this wasn't a case of cherry picking...this was actually just claiming the numbers were different than they actually are."
The Prime Minister said there were 400,000 fewer children in poverty than there were in 2010, and Mr Moy told LBC, "That claim is not true."
Boris Johnson is not the first Prime Minister to have done this, said Mr Moy, and while it is extremely beneficial to have an independent fact-checking body, politicians "need to take this more seriously than they are."
