The Press Association's QuickCheck service has been looking at some of the facts cited by , the first secretary of state, and , the deputy Tory leader, at PMQs. Here are three figures that it suggests are potentially misleading.

215,000 jobs at risk from Labour tax rises?

claimed the OBR report said 215,000 jobs were at risk from the government's tax rises.

PA says he seemed to be quoting a figure that applied to the impact of the tax threshold freezes that started when the Tories were in office.

The OBR said: "Following our standard approach, we have estimated that, taken together, the threshold freezes in income tax and NICs from 2022/23 to 2030/31 could decrease labour supply by 215,000 in average-hours equivalent (AHE) terms by 2030/31."

£183bn spent on working-age welfare?

asked Haigh how much the government was spending on working-age welfare and, when she refused to answer, he said the figure was £183bn.

PA says he seemed to be referencing a figure that covered spending for children and pensioners. It says:

The OBR forecasted total welfare to reach £352.7bn in the current fiscal year.

This figure falls to about £182.8bn certain spending on pensioners. This might be the figure Mr Burghart was referencing, however it includes £13.7bn of child benefit spending.

This figure also includes attendance allowance, a disability benefit paid to those of state pension age.

Separate the Department for Work and Pensions spending on benefits for working-age people is set to reach £136.1bn in 2026/27. This does not include welfare spending from other departments, such as HM Revenue and Customs.

Welfare spending rising £88bn under the Tories?

said welfare spending rose by £88bn in a decade under the Tories.

PA says this is close to what OBR and DWP figures say. But those are cash figures, it says. "In real terms, a measure which offsets for inflation, the DWP figure rose by a more modest £21.8bn," PA says.

The UN refugee agency has said a government plan to make refugees wait up to 30 years before they get permission to settle in the UK "raises significant concerns". has the story.

Legislation aimed at ensuring more major sporting events are held in the UK is poised to become law after being approved by MPs this afternoon. As the Press Association reports, the sporting events bill is modelled on bespoke laws passed for the London 2012 Olympic and Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and creates a framework for future events. It will support competitions such as the upcoming Uefa European football championship in 2028, in addition to future bids, such as the UK's application to host the Fifa Women's World Cup in 2035.

, the culture secretary, told MPs the bill would allow the government "to stand ready to host the biggest events in the world", and added the UK had already bid to host the 2029 World Para Athletics Championships.

The bill has already gone through the House of Lords.

tried his hand at playing the steel drum during his trip to the Caribbean, the Press Association reports. PA says:

The PM played Mary Had A Little Lamb while in Antigua for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting. After his performance of the nursery rhyme, he was told by director of the Hell's Gate steel orchestra "you're a musician", to which modestly replied: "I play a little music."

He was later joined by foreign secretary Ed Miliband for a duet of the nursery rhyme.

Burnham has previously shown off his musical skills on the guitar, including playing a song by The Smiths after being handed an instrument by a Ukrainian soldier on a visit to Kyiv.

, Scotland's first minister, has rejected calls from MSPs for a review of laws which allow people with limited rights to live in the UK to stand for Holyrood.

Yesterday the standards, procedures and public appointments committee, chaired by the Scottish National party MSP Jenni Minto, said the reforms could undermine "fragile" confidence amongst voters in the country's institutions.

Swinney told LBC he had no plans to review the provisions, which first came into force this year in the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025. He said:

We don't intend to do so, no. The parliament voted unanimously for the provision for foreign nationals to be able to stand for elections in certain circumstances.

The reforms came under intense scrutiny after the May election after the Conservatives and Reform UK protested about the election of Q Manivannan, an Indian citizen, for the Scottish Greens in Edinburgh and Lothians East region.

A post-graduate student at St Andrews, it emerged their student visa was due to expire at the end of 2026. They have since been granted a three-year graduate visa, given them right to remain until the end of 2029.

Swinney's government is bidding to expand the provisions of the act by including Commonwealth citizens, who were excluded as a category last year. Swinney told LBC "the government will press ahead with that." Manivannan only qualified because they were on a student visa, not because they were a Commonwealth citizen.

The act covers elections to Holyrood and Scottish councils; Westminster contests in Scotland are reserved to Westminster and excluded.

The Department for Work and Pensions' report released today on the employment of disabled people (see 2.41pm) says that the financial year ending 2026 was the first for more than a decade where the number of disabled working-age people in the UK fell. It says it is too early to know if this was just temporary. It explains:

This (FYE [financial year ending] 2026) is the first full year since financial year ending (FYE) 2014 where the number of disabled people and disability prevalence have decreased, by 0.5% (around 50,000) and by 0.2 percentage points, respectively. It is too early to determine whether this is a temporary change, also as the latest quarterly data for April to June 2026 reports a year-on-year significant increase in the number of disabled people (250,000).

The Commons Treasury committee has started taking evidence from officials from the Office for Budget Responsibility about the budget. , a Conservative member of the committee, asked about Shabana Mahmood's announcement on Monday axing some of the restrictions to indefinite leave to remain (ILR) that had been planned by the Home Office.

The Tories claim this U-turn will cost the exchequer £10bn.

Asked what impact this announcement would have on the OBR's fiscal assumptions, , a member of the OBR's budget responsibility committee, said the OBR would have to review this for its next forecast in the spring. He said he could not give an answer now.

Asked if he thought it really would cost £10bn, Josephs said "that is not an estimate that we produced". He said that was a government estimate for the lifetime cost of some migrants.

Asked if the change on Monday would be "material enough" to require a change to the OBR's forecast, Josephs just said the OBR would assess the policy as a whole. "If we think [the Monday announcement is] significant enough to adjust the forecast, then we will do so."

Mahmood originally produced the £10bn figure to justify the plans she originally announced last year. She said making it harder for migrant workers to get ILR would save the government £10bn over time.

This claim backfired when Mahmood U-turned on a large part of her plan, leading the Tories to claim she was now in effect raising spending by almost £10bn (because the savings were forgone).

Some experts claim the £10bn figure for supposed savings was never realistic in the first place.

Just under half of young people not in work, education or training were classed as disabled in the year to March – a proportion which has more than doubled in just over a decade, the Press Association reports. PA says:

The government is currently working on reducing the number of 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training – known as Neets – with a review expected to be published in the coming weeks making recommendations for changes in the system.

The number of Neets topped a million earlier this year for the first time in more than a decade, fuelling calls for more help to get young people into work.

Government data published today showed 45.3% of Neets were classed as disabled in the year to March.

The Department for Work and Pensions said this was a rise of 24.2 percentage points since the proportion of 21.1% in the 12 months to March 2014.

The latest data showed disabled young people were more than three times as likely to be Neet compared to non-disabled young people – 30.2% compared with 8.6%.

Depression, bad nerves or anxiety was the most common main health condition reported by disabled Neets, accounting for almost a quarter (23.8%), followed by autism (22.7%).

has urged Poundland bosses to work with the government on trying to find a "practical solution" to the problems that have left the company on the brink of administration.

In a pooled interview, asked if he had a message for Poundland executives, Burnham replied:

Focus on the people in your employment, meet with the business secretary because we are setting up that meeting, come up with a practical solution that saves jobs and saves those stores because many of them are viable propositions, they're on high streets, they matter in our communities. There is a solution to be found here, sit down with us and let's find it.

When it was put to him that there was a limit to what the government could do if the company was not profitable, he replied:

There's always a limit, but we're prepared to find what we can do. We believe in this instance there is a solution. There are many viable outlets here. Other retailers are expressing interest. Get around the table. Let's find a solution.

While the public here in the UK - which overwhelmingly believes his presidency has been bad for Britain - may welcome the 'blue tsunami', ministers and officials will be watching nervously for how Trump reacts.

The US president acknowledged overnight the Iran conflict - which has pushed up the cost of living globally - had cost the Republicans votes and has previously suggested a deal could be struck with Tehran post-midterms.

But there are concerns here that a bruised Trump - whose domestic agenda is constrained after losing control of Congress but who still wields a veto and significant power over foreign policy - could now lash out like a caged animal.

There could be a backlash on the world stage as he tries to cement his legacy during his last two years, potentially including more military action in Iran, Ukraine and even Cuba; more trade tariffs; and more unhelpful interventions in UK and European politics.

But for now, there is also relief that the US has cast its verdict on Trump and his combative style of politics, and hope that if the Democrats get their act together (for this was a referendum on the US president rather than a ringing endorsement of his opponents), the 2028 election could transform the special relationship.

has said that he hopes the sweeping losses for Donald Trump's Republican party in the US elections will give the world an "opportunity" to focus on ending the Iran war and easing the cost of living pressures.

In an interview at the Commonwealth summit in Antigua, asked if he was worried the results might make Trump more unpredictable, Burnham replied:

President Trump has accepted the results, and I feel the world has an opportunity now to unite around the issue that is affecting us all, and that's the cost of living.

That has been the issue that I have put front and centre in my first three months in Downing Street, and we've made moves.

But I can't get people's cost of living pressures down until the conflict in the Middle East is resolved. The conflict in Ukraine started by Russia.

These are the things we have to focus on now, and I hope the world has a moment to do that. And certainly, in my calls with leaders, that is what I will be asking everybody to do.

Some politicians and commentators have interpreted the results as evidence that rightwing populism is in retreat around the world. But when asked if he thought the elections were part of a global pattern, Burnham was reluctant to make that claim. Instead, he replied:

I think people want to see the world coming together and focusing on the things that matter to people, and that's what the voters, in my view, are saying in the United States.

Let's get focused in a laser-like way on those cost of living issues. And I think around the world there's a recognition that countries can't do that on their own, and can't do that when we have division between nations.

I've been working hard as prime minister to bring a new approach, a new approach in the Middle East, and the foreign secretary set that out [with the announcements about sanctions on illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank].

A new approach to Europe, and we believe that will help us get growth back up and reduce those cost of living pressures. But a new approach with the Commonwealth too.

Asked if Britain would be pushing for de-escalation in the Iran war, Burnham said:

I'll be working for de-escalation. To make it very clear, we want to see a resolution, the Strait of Hormuz fully opened again. That's what we will be working towards.

If you are deputising at PMQs, it may be nice to get a good write-up from the sketchwriters, and satisfying to craft a line that will play well on the TV or radio later, but, frankly, one task matters above all others: don't mess up. And, in that respect, Louise Haigh and Alex Burghart both performed well – in exchanges likely to be quickly forgotten.

For Haigh, this was her first time, but it did not particularly sound like this. She sounded confident and authoritative, without being brash and hubristic. She did not have anything very new to say about welfare, and Labour does not have a firm answer yet to the question as to when it will cut the benefits bill, but Haigh swerved this quite adequately with attacks on the Tories' record and by making the Labour argument about now wanting welfare spending on failure. She said:

We have been repeatedly clear that we cannot afford to pay for failure and must invest in success – and that is how we will bring the welfare bill down.

We will make support more conditional on taking up opportunities, ensuring young people get help they need earlier, tackling the long-term drivers of welfare spending, including high housing costs, and we will do all this in a Labour way.

She would not rule out tax rises to pay for more welfare spending (see 2.16pm), but that was the sort of question opposition parties ask when they can't think of a proper, specific one and so instead have to resort to simplistic politics-by-slogan.

Burghart has done PMQs before, and he was a bit more polished. His pre-scripted riffs about "two 10-year plans in 10 months", and John Healey's Today programme welfare gaffe last week, were elegantly done, but not quite withering or funny enough to be truly damaging. He didn't fail, but he didn't score.

The most interesting question came from the Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper, who is probably the first MP to get a 'Trump might be a rapist' allegation into Hansard. (See 12.29pm.) Rather ingeniously, she tried to suggest there might be some sort of UK government angle. But there probably isn't. This is one for Congress.

If anyone had a bad PMQs, it was probably Lindsay Hoyle. It was not clear who he was referring to when he delivered his 'don't shout a woman down' bollocking to some Tory MP. (See 12.20pm.) But it sounded a bit chauvinist. Haigh is the second most senior person in government; she seemed perfectly capable of coping with a bit of heckling; and if shouting down a minister is unacceptable, it should not matter what sex they are.

(Lib Dem) asks about conditions at Epsom hospital, where urgent repairs are needed.

says she is aware of the problems. The minister is happy to meet Maguire to discuss the situation, she says.

(Lib Dem) says Haigh recently said the government would give local leaders more power to invest in things that matter. But it is cutting funding for Richmond council by more than £100m over the next four years, 60% of its budget? Will Haigh meet her to discuss this to find a solution.

says the government inherited an unfair council funding system. She offers Wilson a meeting with a minister.

(Lib Dem) asks if the government will back legislation to make US tech companies pay fair compensation to victims of online scams. He says, given the US election results, the government should be tougher with the US administration.

says the Online Safety Act requires tech companies to take robust action on online scams.