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 Government spending an extra £31 billion ‘every year this Parliament’ on protecting the triple lock?
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy recently claimed on Instagram that her party is “spending an extra £31 billion every year in this Parliament to protect the pension triple lock”. Pensions minister Torsten Bell appeared to make a similar claim on X (formerly Twitter), saying that the Government was spending “an extra £31bn every year to protect the triple lock throughout this Parliament”.
But these claims are potentially misleading.
Annual spending on the state pension is set to increase by £31 billion compared to the last financial year, but only by the end of this Parliament. So this figure actually represents the total rise in annual spending over a five-year period, from 2024/25 to 2029/30.
The ‘triple lock’ means the basic and new state pensions are uprated every year by the highest of earnings growth, inflation or 2.5%.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast last month that annual spending on state pensions will rise from £137.8 billion in 2024/25 to £168.7 billion in 2029/30 – an increase of £30.9 billion. But this increase is only forecast to happen over a five-year period.
The OBR has also forecast that overall “pensioner spending”, which includes state pensions but also other forms of support including pension credit, pensioner housing benefit and the winter fuel payment, will increase from £150.7 billion in 2024/25 to £181.8 billion in 2029/30 – an increase of £31.1 billion.
When we contacted the Department for Work and Pensions about Mr Bell’s claim it declined to offer a correction, saying his X post was a summary of the Express article he had linked to earlier in the same thread (which referenced the figure correctly). When asked about Ms Nandy’s claim, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport referred us to the Labour Party, which has not responded at the time of writing.
Is the Government on track to introduce a ‘Hillsborough Law’?
Labour promised in its 2024 election manifesto to introduce a ‘Hillsborough Law’ which would “place a legal duty of candour on public servants and authorities, and provide legal aid for victims of disasters or state-related deaths”.
The proposed law takes its name from the Hillsborough football stadium disaster on April 15 1989, in which 97 people were killed.
While no date was set in the manifesto, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said before the election that the Bill would be a “priority” for a Labour government, and at the Labour Party conference in September 2024 he committed to introducing the law to Parliament before the 36th anniversary of the tragedy on April 15 2025.
The Prime Minister’s commitment to introduce legislation by this anniversary has not been met, as some campaigning for the law have highlighted.
However, the legislation appears likely to be introduced in the current Parliament, which is due to end in 2029/30.
As Labour’s proposed legislation has not been published, we do not yet know how closely it will match the contents of a Hillsborough Bill introduced by then-Labour MP Andy Burnham in March 2017, which did not progress before that year’s general election. However, Labour has pledged the new legislation will place a legal “duty of candour” on public servants and authorities, meaning they would be required to act proactively and truthfully to assist official investigations, inquests and inquiries.
We’ve added our analysis of this pledge to our Government Tracker, which monitors the Government’s delivery on its promises so voters can judge what progress has been made.
Photo of ‘US army general killed in Gaza’ is old image from Iraq
An image was shared on social media recently alongside claims it shows a US army general who was recently killed in the Gaza Strip.
One post on X shared more than 7,200 times was captioned: “BREAKING: Reports confirm the death of General John Pagri, Commander of the Special Tasks Battalion in the US Army, in the Gaza Strip.”
But there is no evidence these reports are genuine. The photo used is at least 15 years old, and shows US soldiers in Iraq with different names.
The Office of the Secretary of Defence told Full Fact the posts are false and that there are no US service members in Gaza. A defence official also confirmed that there is no US army general named John Pagri.
A reverse image search reveals the picture was taken in Iraq. According to an archived version of a 2009 blog post on a US military website, the image shows two soldiers, neither named John Pagri. Moreover, there are no credible reports of a US army general being killed in the Gaza Strip recently.
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