Martin Williams

2017 has been a busy year for FactCheck. With a snap election and the start of Brexit negotiations, politicians have churned out a stream of lies, half-truths and misleading claims. Here are the lowlights of 2017, which were exposed by FactCheck. 1. Jeremy Hunt was wrong about NHS staffing Speaking on World Mental Health Day,…

Incredible revelations about Bob Marley are circulating on the internet. According to the story, a retired CIA officer with weeks to live has confessed to assassinating the singer. But it’s fake news.

America’s Federal Communications Commission recently revealed plans to overturn net neutrality rules that were brought in under Obama. But there have been protests from many of the biggest web firms, and outcry from thousands of consumers.

As the FBI investigates claims that Russian meddling helped Donald Trump become president, FactCheck looks at America’s own track record of interfering with democratic elections.

North Korea has obtained the money, knowledge and materials to build nuclear missiles which – it claims – can reach American soil. But it would be in this position without help from the outside world. FactCheck follows North Korea’s nuclear trail, from the Soviet Union to South London.

In 2014, Channel 4 News conducted an exclusive survey of parliamentary staff, uncovering a widespread and deep-rooted problem. In the wake of the findings, political parties pledged to take action. But now, the scandal has emerged again, with allegations of inappropriate behaviour by dozens of MPs. So what has actually changed since 2014?

This week, the government introduced upfront NHS fees for overseas visitors. But an investigation by FactCheck has found that crucial details were left out of the costings.

Transcripts from the House of Commons can be quietly edited if politicians’ claims are proved wrong. But the public rarely hears an apology. Here are ten incorrect claims we discovered which were made by government ministers. They were all corrected afterwards – but often not for weeks.

The Metropolitan Police have announced new guidelines designed to ‘screen out’ some crimes without investigation. But data obtained by FactCheck shows that the Met already screens out hundreds of thousands of cases each year.

Speaking on World Mental Health Day, the health secretary told MPs: “We’ve got 30,000 more people working in mental health today than we had when [Labour] left office.” But when questioned by FactCheck, the Department for Health admitted that Mr Hunt’s figure includes all professionally qualified clinical NHS staff in England – not just those working in mental health.

The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has defended the “market economy”, saying it has brought people out of poverty. In media interviews and his speech to Conservative conference, Mr Hammond repeatedly accused the Labour Party of posing a threat to this economic model. The chancellor even appeared to compare Labour’s policies to countries like North Korea and…

In his speech at the Labour Party Conference this week, Jeremy Corbyn promised to introduce rent controls. The announcement delighted many struggling private renters, but critics responded saying the move would damage the housing sector and be a “disaster for tenants”. So who’s right? What does ‘rent control’ actually mean? The main problem with the rent controls…

North Korea has claimed that Donald Trump has declared war. The US president had said North Korea’s leaders “won’t be around much longer” and referred to Kim Jong-Un as “Little Rocket Man”. This followed Mr Trump’s speech to the UN last week in which he warned that America would “totally destroy” North Korea if the…

The Conservative MP said that the “real reason” food bank usage has increased is that the government has allowed Jobcentre Plus to tell people they exist. Under Labour, this was not allowed, he said. But does that claim stand up to scrutiny?