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Did the UK decarbonise faster than any other country?

Reality Check

The claim: Rishi Sunak said: "We've decarbonised our economy faster than any other major economy in the world."

The verdict: A parliamentary report earlier this year noted that "the UK has achieved greater decarbonisation than any other country in the G20".

So is Mr Sunak correct? Not entirely.

The source of that claim in the parliamentary report is the Low Carbon Economy Index, published by PwC.

It notes that the UK reduced the carbon intensity of its economy - the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted for each unit of economic output - by 3.7% on average between 2000 and 2018.

That's the most impressive record in the G20 group of major nations.

However, it's not just a Conservative achievement. For much of that time, the UK had a Labour government, and between 2010 and 2015, the UK had a coalition government with the Lib Dems running the Energy and Climate Change department.

And in recent years, the UK's performance has not been so outstanding. The decline in carbon intensity in 2017-18 was 3.5%, in ninth place, behind Germany, China, and even Saudi Arabia.

PwC says the UK will have to increase its rate of decarbonisation dramatically, to 9.7%, to achieve its target of net zero emissions by 2050.

Has immigration led to lower wages?

Reality Check

The Brexit Party’s Richard Tice said: “Unlimited immigration in the last 15 years has depressed wages…We had zero real wage growth.”

Last year, the government’s independent adviser on migration concluded that migration “is not a major determinate of the wages of UK-born workers”.

It “found some evidence suggesting that lower-skilled workers face a negative impact while higher-skilled workers benefit, however the magnitude of the impacts are generally small.”

The UK has effectively had zero real wage growth since 2007 - but that is because wages fell after the 2008 crash and are only just now catching up.

Line chart showing that wages are nearly back to pre-recession levels
BBC

Were Conservative NHS claims correct?

Reality Check

Rishi Sunak, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: “We've outlined a plan for £34bn, that will go on putting 50,000 more nurses on our wards, 50m more GP appointments and new and upgraded hospitals”

That is the amount of money that will be added to the annual NHS budget by 2023-24, but the cash sum isn’t necessarily the most helpful figure to use.

Because the costs of medicines and equipment and paying staff are rising, the government’s own figures show this will actually be worth less by 2023-24 – about £20.5bn once adjusted for inflation. That's what we call the "real-terms" amount because it's a reflection of how much you can buy with the money by the time it is used.

When it comes to the average percentage increase in health spending – this investment would mean funding going up by 3.4% a year through to 2023-4.

This would be higher than the years from 2010 – under the Conservatives in coalition government with the Liberal Democrats - when it was between 1 and 2%.

But it would be significantly lower than the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown when it averaged 6% a year.

Is offshore wind the cheapest form of energy, thanks to the Lib Dems?

Reality Check

The claim: Jo Swinson said: "Offshore wind is the cheapest electricity that you can now create, thanks to the Liberal Democrats supporting that technology when we ran the climate change department."

The verdict: Offshore wind is currently more expensive than onshore wind, gas, or solar, but costs have been tumbling rapidly in price.

An auction in September saw developers agree to sell power from their projects for less than £40 a megawatt hour - a record low price for offshore wind.

Analysis by Carbon Brief suggests that when these new windfarms start running in 2023, they could be slightly cheaper than existing gas-fired power plants.

However, the cost of that power in the future will depend on wholesale gas prices, which are impossible to predict.

Lib Dems managed the Department for Energy and Climate Change from 2010 to 2015 - so they can claim some credit for supporting the remarkable development of the offshore wind industry during those years.

However, the price for offshore wind fell by 30% in the past two years, long after the Lib Dems left government.

Did the Conservative government cut investment spending too far?

Reality Check

The claim: Labour's Rebecca Long-Bailey said: "We are 10 years into a Conservative government who ignored the advice of the IMF, the CBI and other business organisations to invest in the critical infrastructure that businesses need to prosper."

The verdict: In 2010 the Coalition government inherited a deficit (spending more than it raised in taxes) of £149bn - an enormous figure.

The IMF was generally supportive of then Chancellor George Osborne's plans to cut government spending to reduce that deficit.

However, it was critical of the pace at which the government cut investment spending, as spending on long-term projects can boost the economy, and make cutting the deficit easier.

In its regular Article IV report on the UK in 2012, it noted that the UK's economic "recovery has stalled" and that "boosting infrastructure spending would support growth."

In 2013 the deputy prime minister Nick Clegg conceded that the Coalition had cut investment spending too fast, though he claimed at the time that they were just following plans set out by the previous Labour Chancellor, Alistair Darling.