Fact check: Russian casualties, economic growth and potholes pledge
Round-up of fact checks from the last week compiled by Full Fact.
This roundup of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK’s largest fact checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.
– Did 45,000 Russian troops die in November?
On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme last week, Foreign Secretary David Lammy claimed Russia had “lost 45,000 troops, dead, in November alone” in the war with Ukraine.
Figures shared by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) earlier that week, attributed to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, estimate that in November 2024 Russian casualties totalled 45,680. But this figure includes both troops who were killed and those who were wounded – it does not refer solely to deaths.
The MoD told Full Fact it does not have a breakdown of the number of these casualties who were killed, versus those wounded. In December Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that over the course of the war approximately 198,000 Russians had been killed, and 550,000 wounded, suggesting that wounded troops substantially outnumber those killed.
It is worth noting there is always considerable uncertainty over casualty figures in armed conflict, and it is not possible for Full Fact to verify any of these estimates. Russia has reportedly disputed the figures.
A study published in August 2023 found that “both sides likely overestimate the personnel losses suffered by their opponent and that Russian sources underestimate their own losses of personnel”.
We asked the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office about Mr Lammy’s claim, but did not receive a response.
– Did the UK have the ‘fastest growing economy in the G7’ under the Conservatives?
In the last few days a number of Conservative politicians, including Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch, have claimed the last government left Labour with “the fastest growing economy in the G7”.
Full Fact has asked the Conservative Party to confirm exactly what this is based on, and we have not had a response. But a similar claim we looked at last year appeared to be based on combined GDP growth figures for the first two quarters of 2024.
Those figures did initially show that the UK had the highest GDP growth in the G7 over that period. But following revisions to the data, it now suggests by that measure that the UK had the joint-fastest growing economy in the G7 in the first two quarters of 2024, alongside the United States.
The revised Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures show that the UK economy grew by 0.7% in Q1 2024 and by 0.4% in Q2 2024, while the US economy grew by 0.4% in Q1 2024 and by 0.7% in Q2 2024. (In fact, the unrounded figures suggest the United States had the slightly higher growth of the two over the two quarters).
Of course, there are different ways of measuring how fast economies are growing or forecast to grow, and we do not know for sure what figures the Conservative claim is based on.
Meanwhile in Q3 2024, which broadly aligns with Labour’s first three months in office, the UK saw 0.0% growth. That is the joint-lowest rate in the G7 alongside Italy (though this figure too may be subject to revision in future, and the unrounded figures put Italy slightly behind the UK).
– Is the Government’s potholes pledge on track?
With a new Public Accounts Committee report this week critical of the Government’s record on road repairs, Full Fact has just added a new page monitoring Labour’s manifesto pledge on potholes to its Government Tracker.
Labour promised to “fix an additional one million potholes across England in each year of the next parliament”. That pledge appears quite specific – it gives a precise number, time frame and geographical scope, while the word “additional” implies the Government intends to fix one million more potholes than are currently being fixed each year.
But it is unclear how the Government intends to track progress on the pledge, and the data we do have on the number of potholes being fixed is patchy.
There is no nationally agreed definition of a pothole, and when we asked the Department for Transport (DfT) how progress will be measured, we were referred to a set of road condition statistics which do not appear to specifically count the number of potholes fixed.
Separately, the Asphalt Industry Alliance has estimated councils in England filled 1.8 million potholes during the year to March 2024. That is a broad estimate based on extrapolated survey data, but it suggests in order to meet its pledge, the Government would need to fill at least 2.8 million potholes a year.
While the lack of reliable national data makes it difficult to track the delivery of this pledge, the Government has announced significant new funding to address the issue.
On December 20 2024, the Government said £1.6 billion would be made available to authorities across England for 2025/26 to “repair roads and fill potholes”, up £500 million from 2024/25.
A DfT spokesperson told Full Fact: “This will enable local authorities to fix up to seven million more potholes this year, going well beyond our original commitment of one million more potholes annually.”
It is down to local authorities to decide which of the roads they are responsible for need repairing, so it remains to be seen exactly how many potholes the additional funding will be used to fix.
However the Government says the funding has built-in incentives to ensure local authorities spend the money wisely, collect the right data and deliver proactive maintenance, with 25% of the uplift held back initially, and that it will set out more details in due course.
