Image courtesy of Kirsty O’Connor/Treasury
On Wednesday 28 October John Healey MP will deliver Labour’s third Budget since entering government—it will be his first as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the first since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister.
Mr Healey is expected to take to the despatch box in the House of Commons at around 12:30pm, after the end of Prime Minister’s Questions.
The Budget and responses to it will be broadcast live and in full on Parliament Live TV and on BBC Parliament.
Here at Full Fact, we’ll be following it live as well. We’ll be checking claims made by the Chancellor and the Leader of the Opposition, and will highlight claims or statements we think are wrong, misleading or need more context on our social media channels and in this article, which we’ll be updating on Budget Day.
We’re planning on posting our findings on our X and BlueSky accounts as quickly as we can, but some claims may take more time to investigate.
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How we ‘live fact check’
Once the Budget is under way, our team of fact checkers will be monitoring claims in real time, with the help of our AI tools. We’re a small team, so it’s not possible for us to check every single claim, but if we can publish a quick verdict, we will.
Some claims can be more complicated to check than they first appear, or require further research. If claims do require further investigation, we’ll dig into them in more detail after the Budget statement has ended.
When Parliament is sitting we ‘live fact check’ Prime Minister’s Questions each week, and we’ve got a lot of experience checking other big political events as they happen live—most recently Mr Burnham’s first conference speech as PM. You can read more about our live fact checking process here.
Image courtesy of Kirsty O’Connor / Treasury
What is the Budget?
In the Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer presents a statement on the nation’s finances and economic forecasts to the House of Commons, as well as any changes in taxation. The Budget also outlines departmental spending and plans for the funding of certain policies.
After Mr Healey presents the Budget, we expect the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, to respond in the Commons.
MPs then usually spend four days debating aspects of the Budget. Following this, the government presents the Finance Bill, which, if passed, will put into law the government’s new plans on taxation.
