Fact check: Ukraine aid, immigration figures and growth projections
Round-up of fact checks from the last week compiled by Full Fact.
This round-up 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.
Has the UK promised Ukraine £3 billion a year for the next 100 years?
Multiple social media posts have claimed Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has promised to send aid to Ukraine for the next 100 years. But this is not really correct.
Many of the posts share an official portrait photo of Sir Keir alongside text saying he has “promised Ukraine £3 billion a year for the next 100 years while our country goes down the toilet”.
Sir Keir has recently signed a ‘100 Year Partnership Declaration’ between the UK and Ukraine. It doesn’t commit the UK to providing military aid for 100 years – though it does leave it unclear exactly how long a £3 billion annual commitment is likely to last.
The declaration says: “The UK will provide Ukraine with annual military assistance of no less than £3 billion a year until 2030/31 and for as long as needed to support Ukraine.”
When Full Fact asked the Ministry of Defence last month whether the UK would remain committed to paying £3 billion a year until 2030/31 if the war between Russia and Ukraine were to end much sooner, or if the UK was committed to giving £3 billion a year beyond 2030/31 if the war had not ended at that point, it told us it would not comment on a “hypothetical scenario”.
It’s also worth noting that the final provisions of the declaration say it will “continue in effect for 100 years from the date of signature,” but adds that it “may be terminated by either Participant by sending a written notice to the other Participant”.
The House of Commons Library says: “While the agreement leaves long-term military support open ended, it does not commit the government to annually providing Ukraine with £3 billion of military assistance for 100 years.”
Immigration vs net migration figures
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Sir Keir claimed of the Conservatives: “They presided over record high levels of immigration. Reached nearly one million.”
The border security and asylum minister Dame Angela Eagle made a similar claim earlier this week, when in a statement released by the Labour Party she said: “The Tories lost control of our borders with immigration at a record high of nearly one million.”
These figures aren’t quite right, however.
Immigration (the number of people moving to the UK for 12 months or more) actually reached a record high of approximately 1.3 million under the Conservatives in the year to June 2023—significantly higher than the figure of “nearly one million” cited by Sir Keir and Dame Angela.
The figure they quoted is likely to refer instead to net migration (the number of long-term immigrants to the UK minus the number of long-term emigrants), which in the year to June 2023 is estimated to have reached a record high of approximately 906,000.
On a topic as high-profile and polarising as immigration, it’s important ministers quote statistics precisely and accurately, and correct inaccurate or misleading claims as soon as possible.
IMF and OECD growth projections
In a TV interview on Thursday, housing minister Matthew Pennycook claimed that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) both say the UK is “going to be the fastest growing European economy in the years ahead”.
As we’ve said when other ministers have made similar claims in recent weeks, this isn’t what the latest projections from those organisations show.
Figures published by the IMF in January project that the UK’s GDP will increase by 1.6% in 2025 and 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 in 2025 (1.6%) and higher growth in 2026 (1.8%).
The OECD also projects several European countries will have higher GDP growth in 2025 and 2026 than the UK, including Spain (2.3% and 2%), Denmark (2.5% and 1.7%) and Poland (3.4% and 3%).
2026 is the latest year for which these organisations have published projections and we’ve not seen any other comments from the IMF or OECD to support Mr Pennycook’s claim.
It’s possible Mr Pennycook intended to say that the UK was projected to have the fastest growth among European economies in the G7. Both the IMF and the OECD project that the UK will have faster growth than France, Germany and Italy—the other three European countries in the group.
We’ve contacted Mr Pennycook and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government for comment.
