Rishi Sunak's five promises: What progress has he made?
- Published
On 4 January 2023, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak set out his five priorities.
"I fully expect you to hold my government and I to account on delivering those goals," he said.
What progress has he made?
Halve inflation
The government's top priority was halving inflation - the increase in prices over time - by the end of 2023.
Inflation was at 10.7% in the three-month period between October and December 2022, so the aim was to reduce inflation to 5.3% or lower in the last three months of 2023.
The government's measure is the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), which tracks the price of a typical basket of goods.
The CPI for the last three months of 2023 was 4.2%, so Mr Sunak met this pledge.
In April 2024, it was 2.3%, which was close to the Bank of England's target of 2%.
Grow the economy
The government has not publicly said what measure should be used to assess this pledge, despite requests.
In some private briefings to journalists, sources said it would be if the economy was bigger in the three-month period of October to December 2023 than in the previous quarter (July-September).
That was not achieved - the economy shrank 0.3% in the last three months of the year, sending it into recession.
In the whole of 2023, the economy grew by only 0.1%.
Growth in the economy is measured using GDP (or Gross Domestic Product), a measure of all the activity of companies, governments and individuals.
On 28 March 2024, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was asked if the government had failed on this pledge.
He said that the promise had been to halve inflation but that the prime minister: "then said we would grow the economy. I don't think any of us were expecting the economy to actually grow last year."
In the first three months of 2024, the economy came out of recession, with growth of 0.6%. But there was no growth in April 2024, external.
The pledge to grow the economy was made more difficult by the government's promise to halve inflation.
The Bank of England put up interest rates 14 times to stop prices rising so quickly.
However, this also reduced spending, and slowed economic growth.
Reduce debt
When governments talk about reducing debt, it almost always mean as a proportion of GDP.
The idea is that debt is coming down if it is growing more slowly than the economy.
In December 2023, the statistics regulator criticised the prime minister for saying debt was falling when it was actually rising, as BBC Verify also pointed out.
The latest figures for April 2024, external showed government debt stood at 97.9% of GDP - that was 2.5 percentage points higher than for April 2023.
But the government pledge was not about how much debt is now - it was that debt would be forecast to come down in five years' time (2028-29).
In the Budget in March, external, Jeremy Hunt claimed to be on track to meet that pledge because the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicted a fall in 2028-29, external.
But it is going to be tight and will involve challenging spending restraint for some government departments.
Cut NHS waiting lists
Mr Sunak promised: "NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly."
His pledge is on waiting lists in England, because Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland manage their own health systems.
The overall number, external of waits for non-emergency treatment in England was 7.6 million in April 2024.
That is about 350,000 higher than it was when Mr Sunak made the pledge.
But it is about 200,000 down from when waiting lists hit a peak in September 2023.
The prime minister was asked in an interview on TalkTV on 5 February 2024 whether his government had failed to achieve his pledge, Mr Sunak said: "Yes, we have."
He highlighted the level of NHS spending and said: "All these things mean the NHS is doing more than it ever has but industrial action has had an impact."
Research by the Health Foundation, external think tank suggested that industrial action by consultants and junior doctors had lengthened the waiting list by around 210,000 by the end of October 2023.
Stop the boats
In January 2023, Mr Sunak said his final priority was to "stop the boats" carrying people across the English Channel, after 45,755 migrants crossed over from France that way in 2022.
The prime minister proposed to do this through new legislation. The government finally passed its Illegal Migration Bill on 17 July 2023, giving the home secretary a legal duty to detain and remove anyone entering the UK illegally.
The plan included sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda - to act as a deterrent - but so far, no migrant has been forcibly deported to that country.
The boats have not stopped coming.
In the whole of 2023, 29,437 people were detected crossing the English Channel, according to the Home Office, external, which was down more than a third from the previous year.
So far in 2024, 11,433 have been detected, which is up more than a quarter from the same period last year and also ahead of 2022 levels.
CORRECTION 22 APRIL: The waiting list section was changed to reflect methodological changes in February 2024 data as well as incomplete data from September 2023.
