This round-up 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.
How many people die trying to cross the Channel in a small boat?
Talking about small boat crossings in the English Channel in a radio interview on Monday, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf claimed that “almost 1%, one in 100, of people making this journey are dying”.
That is not correct. The data we have suggests the ratio of deaths to small boat arrivals is closer to one in 1,000.
According to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, between 2018 and 2025 a total of 162 people are known to have died attempting a small boat crossing in the Channel.
The total number of recorded arrivals of people crossing the Channel by small boat over the same period was 192,610, suggesting that deaths were equivalent to approximately 0.084% of arrivals over this period – around one death per 1,190 arrivals.
The Migration Observatory told Full Fact on Monday that it had counted 17 deaths related to small boat crossings so far in 2026, which would be approximately 0.11% of small boat arrivals as of August 2.
It is worth noting the figures for total recorded arrivals do not include unsuccessful attempted crossings that were intercepted by French authorities, while the Migration Observatory says its deaths data “may understate the true toll, as not all incidents are reported”.
We’ve looked at the ratio of deaths to arrivals because we do not know how many people included in the interceptions figures published by the Home Office may have made multiple attempts to cross the Channel.
Mr Yusuf did say earlier in his interview that “north of 170” people had died crossing the Channel, which is broadly correct. We contacted Reform UK for comment.
Fake picture of Andy Burnham running
An image of Andy Burnham running near his home with a film crew in the foreground has been shared on Facebook and X, with claims the Prime Minister is doing “social media for the cameras”.
The image is fake, although it closely resembles genuine photos taken on July 25.
There are several differences between the real and fake images. In the real images, a black car is parked facing the police car. In the fake picture, a reddish car appears to be in front of the police vehicle.
Read More
The number plate of the police car in the fake image does not appear to be listed in Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency records, unlike the number plate of the similar-looking police car shown in the genuine images.
The fake picture also contains a SynthID watermark from OpenAI, suggesting it was “generated with OpenAI tools” such as ChatGPT, the OpenAI API or Codex. Glitches such as disembodied feet, cars merging into each other in the background and a boom microphone coming out of a hedge are further clues the image has been generated or manipulated with artificial intelligence.
Before sharing content like this that you come across online, it’s important to consider whether it comes from a trustworthy and verifiable source. Full Fact’s misinformation toolkit contains tips on how to do this, as does our guide to spotting AI fakes.