Fact check: Recognising a Palestinian state, misleading tsunami video and deportations vs returns

Glasgow Times

4 days ago

Is the Government on track with its pledge to recognise a Palestinian state?
On July 29, the Prime Minister announced that the UK would recognise Palestine as a state in September, ahead of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, unless Israel meets certain conditions.
Labour's manifesto committed to formally recognising a Palestinian state 'as a contribution to a renewed peace process which results in a two-state solution'.
A 'two-state solution' refers to a proposed framework to resolve the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which a sovereign Palestinian state is established alongside Israel. Previous efforts at a peace process did not result in a sovereign Palestinian state.
UK governments have long been in favour of a two-state solution, as well as recognising a Palestinian state as part of a process towards that goal. All members of the G7 group of countries have pledged support for a two-state solution, as has the EU and China.
Palestine is currently designated by the UN as a 'permanent observer state', a form of non-member state, meaning it cannot vote on decisions made by the UN's main organs and bodies, such as the General Assembly.
However, the majority of UN member states have formally recognised Palestine. According to media reports, as of July 2025, some 147 UN member states formally recognised Palestinian statehood, not including France, which in the same month committed to recognising Palestine at the General Assembly in September.
The UK is not included in this figure, although it does have a Consulate General in Jerusalem to assist British nationals in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
It has been reported that a number of UK peers have questioned the legal basis for any recognition of a Palestinian state. Full Fact has contacted the Government for comment on this.
How fact checkers helped set the record straight on PM's viral video
When 31-year-old Abby Raworth first realised her photo and name were being shared online – falsely linked to a viral video involving the Prime Minister – she assumed it was a mix-up.
Posts on social media claimed that the woman in the video was not mum-of-three Nicola but was really a 'paid actress' or 'actress and agent' named Abby Raworth. Full Fact's investigation brought to light how much was being written about her online 'without any regard for if it was correct or not.'
Abby has spoken to Full Fact about her experience, telling us: 'What shocks me is how little people bothered to do regarding checks before they used someone's name and accused them of something. There is a lack of accountability for what comes out of peoples' mouths and if it had happened to any of those people they would have a different opinion on it.'
We're grateful to Abby for sharing her story to help show exactly why Full Fact exists to counter the harm caused by misinformation.
Old tsunami video circulates amid Pacific evacuations
A video circulating online amid major evacuations across the Pacific is claimed to show a tsunami which has taken 'thousands of lives'. But this is misleading.
The footage shows three people, including the person filming, narrowly escape huge waves that crash into some small boats on a shore. It was shared online following news of an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Russia, which triggered the evacuation of almost two million people across Japan. Warnings were also put in place in other locations including Hawaii, Ecuador, Indonesia, Peru and China.
A caption shared with the video said: 'Massive Earthquake triggers Tsunami taking thousands of lives in seconds with little to no warning.'
But this footage is not current, or related to the earthquake in Russia or the subsequent tsunami warnings. It actually showed a tsunami which occurred on the west coast of Greenland in 2017, triggered by a landslide.
That tsunami did not kill 'thousands', as stated in the social media posts. Four people were killed, and nine others were injured. The same footage has been wrongly shared in the wake of other earthquakes before.
Has Labour carried out 'record deportations'?
Labour MP Mike Tapp recently claimed that the Government has carried out 'record deportations'. We've frequently seen MPs and ministers using the word 'deportations' when referring to all immigration returns.
Not all immigration returns are 'deportations'. We don't actually know how many meet the official definition of a deportation, which the Home Office defines as 'a specific subset of returns which are enforced either following a criminal conviction or when it is judged that a person's removal from the UK is conducive to the public good'.
We do know, however, that enforced returns – the category of returns which includes deportations – account for a minority (26%) of all returns carried out under Labour during its first year in office.
According to ad-hoc figures published by the Home Office, during Labour's first year in office a total of 35,052 returns were recorded. We don't have the data to compare this exact period to the same period in previous years, but official immigration statistics show that this figure is not a record for the number of immigration returns over a 12-month period, going back to 2004 when this data series began.
These figures show that immigration returns over a 12-month period were consistently above 40,000 between 2010 and 2016, for example. It does appear, however, that the 35,052 returns in the first year of this Labour government represents the highest 12-month figure since 2017.
While we don't know how many of these returns were official 'deportations', the figures show that the 9,115 enforced returns carried out between 5 July 2024 and 4 July 2025 also do not represent a record. While this figure is the highest number of enforced returns carried out over a 12-month period since 2018, prior to 2018 enforced returns were consistently above 10,000 over a 12-month period.
MPs should use statistics transparently and with all relevant context and caveats, and quickly rectify oversights when they occur.