PM's claim on living standards under the Conservatives debunked.

At Prime Minister’s Questions on 21 May the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer claimed that under the previous Conservative government “living standards were at an all-time low”.


Full Fact contacted Number 10 to ask what the PM meant by this, and said they would update their assessment if they ever get one - which seems rather unlikely as they have not had any such reply in the months since Starmer made the statement.

Full Fact were unable to find any data to support Mr Starmer’s claim and the Resolution Foundation told them it believes he “clearly misspoke”.

During the last parliament the Covid pandemic resulted in the worst recession for 300 years. Of course this meant that growth in living standards was badly affected, though as Full Fact says

"At the time this claim was made, full data covering the entire parliament wasn’t available. We now know that, measured quarterly, RHDI per person was slightly higher in Q2 2024 (the last quarter before the election) than in Q4 2019 (when the 2019 general election took place)"

(RHDI is "Real Household disposable income per person" which is the best measure of living standards.)

Referring to the movement of various measure of lining standards during the last parliament, various measures of living standards, the Fact check report says

"At no point during this period, or indeed during the Conservatives’ overall time in government between 2010 and 2024, did any of these measures reach an “all-time low”.

When we asked the Resolution Foundation about Mr Starmer’s statement it told us that he “clearly misspoke” and that it assumes he was intending to refer to the growth in living standards over the previous parliament being at a record low.

Of course, the previous parliament saw the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, both of which had an impact on the global economy, as well as the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. The extent to which these factors should be blamed for the UK’s economic performance in recent years has been a subject of significant debate. The Resolution Foundation told us it was “not a surprise” that living standards saw weak growth over this period given the pandemic and high inflation."





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