'£300m investment' for old RAF base and other Labour claims

Labour leaders have been busy making speeches and giving interviews at the party's conference in Liverpool.

BBC Verify has been looking at some of the claims they made.

'The Labour candidate has just negotiated £300m of investment' - Sir Keir Starmer, Labour leader

Sir Keir Starmer was asked on BBC Radio Lincolnshire about government plans to house up to 2,000 asylum seekers at the former RAF base at Scampton, near Lincoln.

When asked how quickly he would close facilities for housing asylum seekers if Labour wins the next election he said it "shouldn't open in the first place".

Instead, money was available to redevelop the site, so it could be used for aviation, heritage, tourism, education and research, Sir Keir said.

"I think Hamish Falconer, who is the Labour candidate, has just negotiated £300m of investment," he said.

The host Scott Dalton interrupted to say that the £300m had been announced months ago. He said: "It was actually secured by the then Conservative West Lindsey District Council."

That is correct - the deal was announced in March 2023 by Owen Brierley, who was the Conservative leader of the council at the time. The council changed to Liberal Democrat control in the May 2023 elections.

Up to 2,000 asylum seekers could be housed at the RAF Scampton site

Peter Hewitt, the head of Scampton Holdings Ltd, which agreed the deal with the council, confirmed to us that Mr Falconer had not been involved with the negotiations.

However, he said that Mr Falconer and the Labour Party had been working hard to prevent the site being used to house asylum seekers.

Mr Falconer told us he had been involved in the process that led to Labour opposing housing asylum seekers at Scampton. In a LinkedIn post Scampton Holdings Ltd said this had brought "much-welcomed political certainty for securing £300m in private investment".

'Under 13 years of Labour government [there was] not a single strike in the NHS' - Thangam Debbonaire, shadow culture secretary

Appearing on BBC Politics Live, the shadow culture secretary made the claim about the 1997 to 2010 period, when the last Labour government was in power.

She is right that there were no large strikes on the scale seen recently.

However, strikes did occur on a smaller scale.

One strike happened in 2005 when about 600 catering staff, cleaners and porters walked out for 24 hours at four hospitals in Newcastle.

The workers were striking over pay under the recently introduced Agenda for Pay contract.

And in 2006, workers at the health service's delivery arm NHS Logistics went on strike in protest against privatisation plans.

'This summer Michael Gove handed back almost £2bn destined for affordable housing to the Treasury because he couldn't spend it' - Angela Rayner, deputy leader

Mr Gove's Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) "surrendered" £2bn of funds for 2022-23. The figures were announced in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request covered by the Guardian.

This means part of department's budget was given back to the Treasury, although it may be returned to the department in future years.

However, not all of the money returned was for affordable housing.

According to the FOI response, the £2bn surrendered included:

• £255m from the Affordable Homes Programme

• £1.2bn from the Help to Buy scheme

• £245m from the Building Safety Programme

• £90m as a contribution towards military aid to Ukraine.

Mr Gove's department told us surrendering unspent funds was "a normal part of government finance, providing departments with flexibility to manage their budgets between years".

Ben Zaranko from the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank said: "The question here is why departments are struggling so much to get money out the door and spend it in the year it's intended for."

'The cost to the taxpayer of Covid fraud is estimated at £7.2bn' - Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor

Shadow chancellor Reeves told the Labour conference the party would "go after" those who profited from the "carnival of waste" during the pandemic.

The figure comes from a report by public spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO), which estimated the fraud related to Covid schemes at £7.3bn.

The report said the government prioritised speed when setting up Covid schemes, leaving it vulnerable to fraud.

But the bad news is that the NAO also said it was very unlikely that most of lost money would be recovered.

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