Facts
During his speech at the Conservative Party conference in October 2023, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed that “… Labour’s plan is to cook up some deal with the EU, which could see us accepting around 100,000 of Europe’s asylum seekers.”
As Full Notes notes: “This is misleading. The 100,000 figure is a Conservative party estimate which is not reliable, because it makes several assumptions and appears to misinterpret a recent EU agreement on relocating asylum seekers. We don’t know how many migrants the UK might take under a future returns deal with the EU – Labour has not said what such a deal would involve, or how many migrants it would accept.”
Verdict
Here is Rishi Sunak disseminating fabricated information to the Tory conference.
We emailed Rishi Sunak’s office and Downing Street offering them the chance to respond. The email was received, but no reply.
Additional Note
Sunak was not making a casual error. The same misleading information has been shared on both Greg Hands’ and the Conservative Party’s official X accounts. Conservative ministers have repeatedly shared the claim that Labour plans to take “100,000” migrants. It’s therefore reasonable to assume that Sunak was deliberately misleading – ie lying to – Conservative Party conference.