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Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer answered questions from BBC viewers in their final face-to-face debate before voting day.
They traded accusations about immigration, tax and net zero policy. BBC Verify has looked into their claims.
Will Labour introduce a severance tax?
Rishi Sunak He said that under a future Labour government “state pensions will be subject to severance tax”.
Pensioners who rely solely on the state pension could end up paying a small amount of income tax in 2027-28 because their state pension that year (£12,578) is forecast to be slightly higher than their tax-free personal allowance (£12,570).
The Conservative government’s triple lock plus policy, which would increase personal allowances for pensioners to £13,710 by 2027-28, would eliminate this risk.
Labour has yet to say whether it will match this tax increase, but it would be a bit disingenuous to present this as a planned tax increase from Labour, as the Conservatives only announced the policy within the last few weeks.
It’s also important to remember that the Conservative government’s triple lock plus would only save around £29 a year for someone living solely on the state pension.
In addition, some people already pay tax on part of their national pension.
Analysis by Steve Webb, a former Liberal Democrat pensions minister who works for an actuarial firm, suggests that around 2.5 million pensioners – one in five – currently pay income tax on their state pension and that this amount would still remain the same even if triple lock plus was introduced.
This is because many people are part of the State Earnings-Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) and therefore receive an additional state pension.
Did 50,000 people cross the Channel under the Sunak government?
Keir Starmer “Since Rishi Sunak became chancellor, 50,000 people have crossed in small boats,” he said.
Ministry of Interior Announce the numbers People have been spotted attempting to cross the English Channel in small boats – dating back to 2018. The exact number spotted since Rishi Sunak became Chancellor on 25 October 2022 is 50,108.
The highest number recorded in a single year was in 2022, when 45,755 people arrived this way.
Last year, 29,437 people arrived on small boats, a drop of one-third from the previous year.
In the past 12 calendar months, 31,204 people were detected crossing the border, a 30% decrease compared to the previous 12 months.
However, 13,045 cases have been detected so far this year, up about 16 percent from the same period last year and the highest number ever.
Will Labor’s net zero plan cost hundreds of billions of dollars?
Rishi Sunak “We have just discovered that they have released an audio recording of a Labour deputy chancellor admitting that their plans will cost hundreds of billions of pounds,” he said.
The Prime Minister, Daily Telegraph article Darren Jones, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, was reported to have said Labour’s net zero plan would cost “hundreds of billions” of pounds.
But the figure is in line with existing estimates for reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, as set out in law and Conservative policy.
UK’s Independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) Reported in 2021 Reaching net zero by 2050 would require investment of around £1.3 trillion.
But the OBR also said switching away from fossil fuels would save around £1 trillion, significantly lowering net costs.
Most of the investment costs are expected to be funded by the private sector rather than through direct government spending, which Jones did not mention in the audio clip published by The Telegraph.
Is Labour’s manifesto adequately funded and spent?
Keir Starmer He described Labour’s manifesto as “fully funded and fully costed”.
However, independent think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) analysed the manifesto earlier this week and said it had doubts about claims that sufficient funding has been set aside, particularly in relation to promises to reduce NHS waiting times.
“You can’t promise to remove all waiting periods longer than 18 weeks, then not allocate funding to that promise and claim to have a fully costed manifesto,” said Paul Johnson, director of the IFS.
He also said the Conservative government’s approach to the NHS was “essentially unfunded”.
Will Labour raise taxes by £2,000 per household?
Rishi Sunak “Can you afford to pay at least £2,000 in tax?” he asked, arguing that this is what a Labour government would ask of people.
This figure can be misleading as it amounts to an extra £500 per year for four years – if you were told your tax would rise by £2,000 it would be hard to believe.
The Conservatives came up with the figure by adding up the cost of Labour’s spending plans – £38.5 billion over four years – and dividing it by the number of UK households with at least one member in work. Labour has disputed the figure.
The Conservatives insist the cost estimates were calculated by impartial civil servants but are based in part on guesses by politically appointed special advisers.
For example, one costing study looked at Labour’s plans to have more services provided by government rather than private companies, and assumed that private companies are always 7.5% more efficient. But the civil servant who carried out the costing has warned against using that figure. Read more here.
Are people still paying the price for Liz Truss’s unfunded tax cuts?
Keir Starmer He said the Conservatives were planning “tax cuts without the money”, adding that former chancellor Liz Truss had experimented with it. “People are still paying the cost,” he said, “because of the damage we’ve done to the economy, they’re paying hundreds of pounds extra.”
It is true that during Truss’s short-lived premiership, mortgage rates soared after a mini-Budget that included unfunded tax cuts.
But mortgage rates had been rising even before the mini-Budget as the Bank of England was raising interest rates to fight inflation, which had started to rise after the pandemic and the Ukraine war. This spike subsided in early 2023.
The Bank of England governor said in January last year that the impact of the mini-Budget on interest rates had “largely disappeared”.
But people who took out fixed-rate mortgages shortly afterward may have ended up with higher interest rates than they would have otherwise.
