Labour: Keir Starmer claims fact-checked

Sir Keir Starmer has been setting out his vision for a future Labour government, following his speech to his party conference in Liverpool. The Labour leader has criticised the Conservative government’s handling of the economy and announced plans for what his party would do in power.

We’ve looked into some of his claims from the speech and his broadcast interviews.

“We would introduce a windfall tax on the excess profits for oil and gas companies, £170bn pounds worth”

Sir Keir used the £170bn figure on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme when explaining how Labour would bring in a bigger windfall tax.

We asked Labour where it came from and they pointed us to a Bloomberg article from August.

The article said the £170bn came from an unpublished estimate made by the Treasury of how much the UK’s energy producers could make over the next two years.

We asked the Treasury whether the figure was correct and it said it did not recognise Bloomberg’s analysis. It pointed us to the £5bn a year it expects to raise from the existing windfall tax on companies extracting UK oil and gas.

The latest figures from the North Sea Transition Authority show companies made around £21bn in profits from extracting oil and gas in the North Sea in 2021. That was, of course, before the energy shock caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which has led to energy producers making bigger profits as the price of gas has gone up.

But there’s considerable uncertainty over whether you could get to £170bn over the next two years – even if you factor in excess profits – especially given the volatility of gas prices.

‘The war didn’t scrap home insulation, the war didn’t stall British nuclear energy. The Tories did that’

In his speech, the Labour leader said the government had failed to prepare for the cost-of-living crisis, which he acknowledged had been sparked by the Ukraine conflict.

The Conservatives did scrap the Green Homes Grant – a scheme to insulate 600,000 homes in England – last year. It had reached just 10% of the target figure.

Money is now being targeted at lower-income households, but the Conservatives’ record on insulation has been criticised as “too slow” by the Climate Change Committee. The UK has some of the worst-insulated homes in Europe.

On nuclear energy, in the 12 years of Conservative (and Conservative-led) government, work has started on one new nuclear plant – at Hinkley Point C, which is due to open in 2027. In July 2022, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced another one would be built at Sizewell C.

But no new nuclear plants were built in 13 years of Labour government (1997-2010) – although then Prime Minister Gordon Brown did approve sites for new nuclear in 2009.

‘The largest onshore wind farm in Wales. Who owns it? Sweden’

Sir Keir was making his case for a publicly owned renewable energy company he would set up – Great British Energy.

The onshore wind farm he referred to is Pen-y-Cymoedd in South Wales. It was set up in 2014 following a £220m investment by Swedish company Vatenfall and became operational in 2017.

While the company which operates the site is based in the UK, the ultimate parent company is Sweden’s state-owned Vattenfall.

Pen-y-Cymoedd has a total of 76 wind turbines and provides energy to 15% of all households in Wales.

Keir Starmer was talking about the tax cuts announced in the Conservative government’s mini-budget on Friday. They included reversing the rise in National Insurance next month and cutting the basic rate of income tax and scrapping its top rate next year.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), a leading economic research group, says tens of millions of people will be affected.

But IFS Director Paul Johnson said only those with incomes over £155,000 will be net beneficiaries of the tax cuts, when all other tax measures – over the course of the whole Parliament up to 2025 – are taken into account.

He pointed out that the thresholds for the personal allowance and higher income tax rate will be frozen until the end of this Parliament.

And he said this means, with inflation now so high, that the freezes represent big effective income tax rises.

We are continuing to look at other claims and may update this piece.