This round-up of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK’s independent fact-checking charity which works to give people access to reliable information they can trust.
‘Immigration’ has not fallen by 82% under Labour
In a radio interview on Wednesday about the anti-immigration protests seen in Northern Ireland, Labour party chairwoman and Cabinet Office minister Anna Turley MP claimed that “we’ve reduced immigration by 82% under this Government”.
This is not correct. The actual fall in immigration under Labour is much less, and if Ms Turley was citing the 82% figure which has been used by the Prime Minister and Home Secretary recently, she was wrong for two reasons. That 82% figure represents the estimated decrease in net migration, not immigration, from its peak in March 2023, not since Labour took office.
The latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures for the year ending December 2025 estimate that immigration (the number of people moving to the UK) has fallen by 45% from a peak of 1.47 million in the year ending March 2023. Since the year ending June 2024, the month before Labour took office, it has fallen by approximately 37%.
Meanwhile, net migration (immigration minus emigration) has fallen by 82% from its peak of 944,000 in the year ending March 2023, and by 74% since the year ending June 2024.
We contacted Ms Turley’s office for comment but did not receive a response.
This is not the first time we have seen ministers apparently confusing the figures for immigration and net migration. We fact checked the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer last year after he appeared to make a similar error on more than one occasion.
Fake image of ‘anti-Reform’ rally shared ahead of Makerfield by-election
A picture supposedly showing a huge anti-Reform rally held in Wigan ahead of next week’s Makerfield by-election has been circulating on social media.
The image has been widely shared on X with the caption: “Huge crowd in Wigan tonight for ‘Rally Against Reform’ Makerfield says NO to Nigel Farage.”
But the picture, which has also been posted on Bluesky and Facebook, and appears to show a huge crowd, isn’t real. It was generated with artificial intelligence (AI).
We know that this isn’t a real image of a rally in Wigan in Greater Manchester for several reasons.
Firstly, the large open square depicted doesn’t really exist, although some named landmarks correspond to real spots in Wigan.
One of these landmarks is the Galleries shopping centre building, but this has now been demolished as part of a £135 million redevelopment of the town centre.
Currently, much of the area seemingly depicted in the image is a construction site and not publicly accessible. And even before it was knocked down it didn’t look as depicted in the image.
The picture also contains a number of glitches which are hallmarks of AI content.
Some of the signs being held at the supposed rally, such as for the TUC union, contain garbled text. And some of the banners held seem unrelated to a political protest, such as for “The Sealed Knot”, which is an English Civil War re-enactment society, and for Mensa, which is an organisation for people with high IQs.
Additionally, we found the image contained an invisible SynthID watermark, meaning it was generated with OpenAI’s tools, such as ChatGPT or Codex.
While several Stand Up to Racism protests and leafleting events have taken place in Wigan against Reform UK in recent weeks, this is not a genuine image of these events, which have reportedly been attended by around 60 people.
Before sharing content like this which you may come across online, it is important to consider whether it comes from a reliable and trustworthy source. Our Full Fact misinformation toolkit has guides to spotting AI content and misleading pictures.
