Immediately after the Health and Social Care Minister Will Quince MP had said there had been “record investment” in the NHS and “record numbers of staff” under the current Conservative Government, Fiona Bruce interrupted and said:

I’ll let you carry on but since we’re talking about investment let’s just look at a graph looking at funding of the NHS.  This will be familiar to you in terms of where funding was for the NHS before the Conservative government came into power and where it is now.  So as you can see, if you look at the average there, it’s pretty dramatic in terms of the drop in funding.  So when you talk about record investment that doesn’t look so good.

The graph, which represented the annual percentage change in health care spending since 1997-98 based on 2019-2020 prices, showed an increase in spending in every financial year except one (under the Coalition Government), so the reference to a “drop in funding” was misleading.  The guidance on reporting statistics which accompanies the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines on accuracy says “When our output includes statistics, we should explain the numbers, put them into context, weigh, interpret and challenge and present them clearly”.  It also says programmes should “Take care when interpreting graphs and charts”.  Because Ms Bruce’s words in this instance actually conflicted with the information shown on the graph, the ECU  judged this section of the programme to have fallen short of the BBC’s standards for due accuracy, and upheld the complaint in that respect. 

After Ms Bruce’s intervention, Mr Quince went on to say “we’re spending more on health and social care now than ever in our country’s history.  It’s real terms growth every year”, to which Ms Bruce responded “But that’s naturally going to happen because of inflation.  As a percentage of an increase, the average increase has been something like 3% but when you look at that it’s more like 1.6%”.  The ECU acknowledged there was an element of confusion here, the reference to inflation suggesting Ms Bruce had in mind nominal, rather than real, growth.  It appears, however, that she was seeking to draw Mr Quince’s attention to the difference in the overall average increase in health spending year on year, compared to the average under the Conservatives since 2015.  Her reference to “something like 3%” reflected the average annual increase since the NHS was formed, whereas her reference to an average increase “more like 1.6%” was intended to reflect the lower figure under the Government between 2015 and 2020.  In the ECU’s view, despite the element of confusion, the substantive point Ms Bruce intended to make was based on fact and to that extent not likely to give viewers a materially misleading impression.

In relation to an intent to promote the idea that spending on the NHS had been higher under Labour than under the Conservatives, the ECU noted that the graph in fact showed higher levels of spending under the current Government than under Labour, and so cannot have been intended by the programme-makers to promote the opposite impression.  The complaint was not upheld in relation to bias

Partly upheld (Accuracy)