The Daily Express has corrected an article by former chair of the Conservative Party, following an IPSO ruling on a complaint by the fact checking organisation Full Fact.
From September 2023 onwards, the Conservative party and its representatives started to claim that 100,000 more migrants would enter the UK every year under a Labour government. Full Fact published a fact check which concluded that the claim was misleading and asked the party not to repeat it. The Migration Observatory subsequently pointed out that the calculation was based on a mathematical error.
The then-Conservative Party Chairman Richard Holden repeated the claim in a comment piece for the Daily Express published on Boxing Day 2023, asserting that the Labour Party’s immigration plans “would see Britain take in 100,000 extra illegal migrants, already in Europe, every year”. Full Fact complained that this aspect of the article breached the “accuracy” clause of IPSO’s Editors’ Code of Practice.
In a ruling published on 6 September 2024, IPSO upheld Full Fact’s complaint. In its findings, IPSO rejected the publisher’s argument that the claim by Mr Holden was distinguished as comment, determining that the claim was an unambiguous one “about a political party’s policy, without qualification or a reference to the fact that this was a Conservative Party estimate premised on the assumption that a future Labour government would participate in an EU relocation scheme”. The figure was not distinguished as conjecture on the part of the Conservative Party and was a breach of Clause 1 (iv).
IPSO found that the reporting of the claim as a fact was significantly inaccurate, “taking into account the importance of readers being able to understand the context of public policy decisions” and that a correction was required under Clause 1(ii). The correction offered by the publication, which stated only that the figure was disputed by third parties, did not specify the inaccurate information, or put on record the correct position. It was not offered with due promptness or, given that it was not offered in print, in a manner which represented due prominence in relation to the print version of the Article. This was a breach of Clause 1 (ii).
IPSO has published its full ruling and Full Fact has set out a detailed account of the background to and process of resolution of its complaint.
Full Fact was advised by Gervase de Wilde of 5RB, acting pro bono.