General Election 2019 Stat Checks: Week Five

All things must end.

This is my final stat check for the campaign. Including the article before official campaigning started, this is the sixth post on suspicious stats and fallacious figures in the 2019 General Election.

The BBC’s More or Less programme has Tim Harford cutting his scalpel of truth into claims about nurses, hospitals and the economy.

Polls open at 7am on Thursday 12th December.

The poverty conundrum

Claim: There are 400,000 fewer children in poverty than in 2010.
Rating: False.
Reasoning: The Prime Minister claimed:

Actually there are 400,000 fewer children in poverty than there were in 2010.

There are multiple ways to measure poverty. Such claims generally require parties to be more clear about what they mean.

However, no main poverty measure shows a reduction of 400,000.

No main poverty measures shows a reduction of this scale. (Image: Full Fact)

Labour’s counter-claim that the number of children in poverty has increased by 500,000 refers only to relative income poverty after housing costs. In 2010/11, that measure estimated 2.3m children were in poverty. By 2017/18, that figure was 2.8m. Alternately, you could choose to measure against the…