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.
Is the UK projected to be Europe’s fastest-growing economy?
Industry minister Sarah Jones MP last week told Parliament: “The International Monetary Fund and the OECD predict that the UK will be Europe’s fastest-growing economy over the next few years.”
But as we’ve written a number of times in recent weeks when other government ministers have made similar claims, this is not what the latest projections from these organisations show. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have both projected a number of European countries will have higher GDP growth than the UK in 2025 and 2026.
Ms Jones has now corrected the Parliamentary record after Full Fact contacted her about her claim.
Figures published by the IMF in January project that the UK’s GDP will increase by 1.6% in 2025 and by 1.5% in 2026, but that both Spain (2.3% and 1.8%) and Poland (3.5% and 3.3%) will have higher GDP growth in both years.
The Netherlands is projected to have similar GDP growth to the UK in 2025 (1.6%) and higher growth in 2026 (1.8%).
In December, the OECD also projected that several European countries, including Spain, Denmark and Poland, will have higher GDP growth than the UK in both 2025 and 2026.
A formal written correction has now been published in Hansard. The corrected transcript says: “The International Monetary Fund and the OECD predict that the UK will be Europe’s fastest-growing major G7 economy in the coming years.” This is indeed what IMF and OECD projections show.
Ms Jones is the first minister in the current government to have corrected the record in Hansard after being contacted by Full Fact about a misleading or inaccurate claim.
Has the Government delivered two million extra NHS appointments?
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday Sir Keir Starmer said the Government had “delivered over two million extra appointments to get the NHS back on its feet”, in a reference to one of Labour’s manifesto pledges.
Although Sir Keir didn’t explicitly talk about the pledge on Wednesday, the Government last month claimed it had delivered on its NHS appointments pledge “seven months early”.
Full Fact has been following this pledge via our Government Tracker, which is monitoring the Government’s delivery on its promises so voters can judge what progress it has made.
It is true there were 2.2 million more NHS appointments in England between July and November 2024 than in the same period in 2023. On a weekly basis that amounts to about 100,000 more appointments per week during this time.
However the original pledge in Labour’s manifesto appears to have been set as an annual target, it was to “deliver an extra two million NHS operations, scans, and appointments every year”.
That means we will not be able to say for sure that the Government has hit its target until we know the figures for Labour’s first full year in office, though it currently appears on track.
Some reporting of the Government’s claim last month that it had hit its target mentioned that the same period in 2023 was affected by strikes in the NHS, which would have reduced the level of hospital activity at the time, making subsequent years look higher by comparison.
While it is true that NHS England was affected by strikes in 2023 between July and November, this doesn’t necessarily make it an unfair comparison, since strikes over pay are at least to some extent within each government’s control.
Could the whole British Army fit into Wembley Stadium?
In recent days we’ve seen various different claims about the size of the armed forces, amid increasing debate about defence spending.
There are a number of ways to measure the number of personnel, which can make comparing the size of the armed forces, either historically or internationally, difficult.
As of 1 January 2025, there were just over 180,000 service personnel in the UK’s armed forces, according to the most comprehensive measure of manpower.
This figure, which counts trained and untrained service personnel in the Army, Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force, was down by 1.3% on the year before.
One claim we’ve seen circulating is that the whole British Army could fit into Wembley Stadium.
Whether this is true depends on whether or not you count the Army Reserves.
Wembley Stadium’s seated capacity is approximately 90,000.
While there are different measures of the Army’s strength, the number of UK Regular Forces trained and untrained Army personnel, just under 74,000, would be able to comfortably fit into Wembley with room to spare.
However, there are also 25,742 Volunteer Reserves in the Army.
The Army’s total personnel, counting trained and untrained personnel, and including Regular Forces, Gurkhas, Volunteer Reserves and other personnel, is 108,413, which is above Wembley’s capacity.
