‘Lying’ leaflets caused an angry clash between David Cameron and Gordon Brown at the second televised leaders’ pre-election debate, hosted by Sky News. FactCheck looked at the truth behind the leaflets, and a host of other claims from the debate. See below for a full list of and links to all of our analysis.
- “We will keep the free television licence, we will keep the pension credit, we’ll keep the winter fuel allowance, we’ll keep the free bus pass. Those leaflets you have been getting from Labour, the letters you have been getting from Labour are pure and simple lies.” David Cameron
Full analysis: Leaflets from Labour are ‘pure and simple lies’ - “David, I have not authorised any leaflets like that.” Gordon Brown
Full analysis: Did Brown authorise leaflets containing ‘lies’? - “I got a letter a few months ago from an elderly couple who said to me they now find it so difficult to heat their homes on cold winter days that on those cold winter days they get into a bus in their town and travel round the bus just to stay warm.” Nick Clegg
Full analysis: Clegg’s elderly couple who travel by bus to keep warm - “The European Union is not perfect – of course not. I mean, this is a club that took 15 years to define ‘chocolate’ in a chocolate directive. Anything that takes 15 years to define chocolate is not a model of democratic efficiency.” Nick Clegg
Read more: Debate round-up two - “I don’t think I have been on any more than one plane during this election campaign, I have been going around by trains.” Gordon Brown
Read more: Debate round-up two - “We have a proposal called the Green Deal, where we want to say to everyone in this country, that you could spend up to six and a half thousand pounds on your home, to insulate it and better protect it, and then you can see your energy bills come down. And we will have companies, and Marks & Spencer and others have expressed an interest, to come and carry out that work and to pay for it and to share with you the reduction in the bills.” David Cameron
Read more: Debate round-up two - “You can’t deport 900,000 people. You don’t know where they live.” Nick Clegg
Read more: Debate round-up two - “The situation is worse than Gordon Brown describes, because actually, according to the government’s own figures, we are potentially heading for power cuts in 2017.” David Cameron
Read more: debate round-up two - “Three million jobs depend on our membership of the European Union.” Gordon Brown
Read more: Debate round-up two - “Look, what happened on Christmas Eve was a bomber who would have been in Detroit and bombing that plane, came from Somalia. That was really where he was given his orders from. So we have got to deal with al-Qaida in Somalia and Yemen, as well as in Pakistan.” Gordon Brown
Read more: Debate round-up one - “The Lisbon Treaty has just about seven words on climate change. You don’t need another treaty for politicians to get together in different countries, you need political will, you need action.” David Cameron
Read more: Debate round-up one - “Net inward migration is falling as a result of the measures we’re taking.” Gordon Brown
Read more: Debate round-up one - “We now have a budget deficit the same size as Greece.” David Cameron
Read more: Debate round-up one - “I don’t think it’s right to do what both David Cameron and Gordon Brown want… to spend up to £100bn renewing, exactly in the same old way, the Cold War Trident nuclear missile system.” Nick Clegg
Read more: Debate round-up one - And finally: as Labour leaflets loomed so large in our debate analysis, we also looked at what the other two main parties were putting on their pamphlets.
Read more: Labour’s lying leaflets but what about the others?
And on to round three: the FactCheck team will of course be running the rule over the final leaders’ debate, on Thursday 29 April. Follow @factcheck on Twitter to get the latest updates as they happen.
