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Ended EN Tue 30 Jun, 14:00

PMQs: Prime Minister's Questions - 3 June 2026

🏛 UK Parliament
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The fact-checks · 11 claims

55%
Imprecise
Benefits alone have risen by 20 billion pounds since he came to office.
The direction is correct: welfare spending has risen sharply since Labour took office in July 2024. The OBR's latest assessment shows DWP welfare spending rising by around £18 billion in a single year to about £333 billion. A cumulative rise near £20 billion is plausible, but the exact figure and the scope of 'benefits alone' cannot be anchored precisely to a single primary source.
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60%
Imprecise
And she talks about the welfare bill. It soared to 88 billion pounds by 88 billion pounds on their watch.
Official DWP figures put the rise close to, but not at, 88 billion pounds, and only in cash terms. In the Benefit expenditure and caseload tables 2026 (Spring Forecast), total Great Britain welfare spending in nominal terms went from 193.6 billion pounds in 2010/11 to 277.3 billion pounds in 2023/24 - an increase of about 84 billion pounds over the last Conservative government (about 86 billion on the wider UK measure). Adjusted for inflation the picture is very different: on the same DWP table, at 2026/27 prices, the total went from 296.1 billion pounds in 2010/11 to 303.8 billion pounds in 2023/24, an increase of roughly 8 billion pounds. The 88 billion pounds figure is therefore in the right order of magnitude in cash terms only, and DWP does not publish a series that produces exactly that number.
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60%
Imprecise
Apprenticeship starts fell by 40% on their watch.
Apprenticeship starts in England did fall under the Conservatives, from a peak of about 521,000 in 2010/11 to roughly 353,500 in 2024/25 — a fall of around 32%. A 40% drop is reachable only if measured from the peak to the COVID-year low, so the headline figure is overstated for the full period; the core claim of a large decline is correct.
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78%
True
Net migration which reached nearly a million under them ... down by a staggering 82%.
ONS figures show net migration peaked at about 906,000 in the year ending June 2023 and fell to a provisional 171,000 in the year ending December 2025 — a reduction of roughly 81%, consistent with the '82%' cited within rounding. 'Nearly a million' is a slight rhetorical rounding-up of the ~906,000 peak.
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80%
True
The asylum backlog down by 46%.
The initial-decision asylum backlog fell to about 49,000 applications by the end of 2025, which official/analytical sources describe as 46% lower than a year earlier and the smallest backlog since 2020. The figure matches the claim.
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65%
Imprecise
I'm proud of what we're delivering ... The fastest growing economy in the G7.
The UK did record the highest quarterly GDP growth in the G7 in Q1 2026 (0.6%) and was cited as fastest-growing in the first half of 2025, but this is not true across the full period: the OECD's full-year 2026 forecast (about 1%) does not place the UK top of the G7, and the UK lagged in late 2025. The claim is true only for selected quarters.
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72%
True
Zero Conservative councilors for the first time since 1964 across Havering and the first Reform UK London Borough.
In the May 2026 Havering elections the Conservatives won zero of 55 seats while Reform UK won 39 and took control — its first London borough. The core facts (no Conservative councillors, first Reform-run London borough) are confirmed; the specific 'first time since 1964' historical comparison is plausible (Havering's council was created in 1964) but is not independently documented in the sources checked.
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