FactCheck

“Yes, there are Olympic virtues. No they’re not the ones Boris Johnson – in his finest rhetorical mode – listed. And no, they’re nothing to do with the rings.”

Immigration Minister Damian Green has claimed that tens of thousands of people who come to the UK for marriage and are eligible for benefits claim them. FactCheck tries to find them.

You may remember last month the FactCheck team homed in on the housing minister Grant Shapps’ grand designs. You can see their ruminations here. Now, Labour’s accusing him of misleading parliament, and potentially even breaking the ministerial code.

The acting chief constable of Lancashire Constabulary claims his force has seen a rise in crime because of police budget cuts. FactCheck isn’t convinced.

Spain may be the latest European country heading for a massive bailout. That might mean Britain has to pay. FactCheck wonders how much.

“The Crown Estates brought in £230.9m to the Treasury last year and Queen only received £32.1m from the state, so on the face of it there’s a huge net gain for the taxpayer. That’s one reason why monarchists claim that the royal family pays for itself.”

“He dodged a bullet today, but has Jeremy Hunt really cleared his name?”

Justice Secretary says his new Justice and Security Bill won’t increase secrecy in British courts. FactCheck investigates.

“After much prevarication, government spokesmen have told us the 2020 targets still stand, including that irksome pledge to have fewer than 10 per cent of the nation’s children living in households that earn 60 per cent of the nation median.”

Venture capitalist Adrian Beecroft advises the government to cut red tape and make it easier to fire workers to save the economy. FactCheck doesn’t think it’ll do much good.

Jim Murphy has challenged the government to “come clean” about how much its aircraft carrier u-turn has cost the taxpayer – which he’d heard could be as much as £250m. “This is an embarrassing shambles,” he said, after Defence Secretary Philip Hammond went from outlining a bill of something between £40m-£50m only to admit later that it could be as much as £100m. Mr Hammond insisted however that the bill would be “much less than £250m”. Who’s right? FactCheck investigates.

It was a short Queen’s Speech, and for some not a very sweet one – with the government taking a beating for making no mention of some key policies. Is it the Lib Dems’ fault as Mr Cameron claims? FactCheck looks at what was missing in the Speech and why.

couple of days after the budget, with rows raging about the “granny tax” and George Osborne’s decision to help the super-rich by cutting the 50p rate, the PM had what seemed like a smart idea. Number 10 decided to bring forward plans to increase the price of cheap alcohol, to tackle binge drinking and what David Cameron called “the mayhem on our streets”. According to Mr Cameron cheap booze is causing a “scourge of violence” – a million violent crimes and more than a million hospital admissions each year. Setting a minimum unit price (MUP) would, he promised, provide “a big part of the answer”. But I’ve found out that just four days before he made his announcement, he’d been warned by one of his own ministers that the policy could well be illegal. Was the PM right to go ahead or should he have listened to his colleague?

“His best predictions at time of writing are that Labour would win 34.04 per cent of the vote in the next general election, but the Conservatives would still be ahead on 36.59 per cent.”