Claim

Adverts on the Conservative Party’s Facebook page linked to a BBC article on an spending announcement by the government.

Facts

As Full Fact pointed out, the BBC headline had been changed on the Conservative Party adverts. The original headline was ‘School spending: Multi-billion pound cash boost announcement.’

Full Fact said: “We asked the Conservative Party whether it altered the headline for the purposes of the ad. Beyond an initial comment saying that it was “looking further into this,” we did not receive a response, but the party later told the BBC it had not been the party’s intention to misrepresent their work and it was reviewing how it presented advert headlines.”

I rang up the Conservative Party to ask what disciplinary action had been taken against the officials responsible. It did not answer and simply said: “Our advertising practices remain under constant review.”

Verdict

The Conservative Party deliberately misled voters about a BBC article in order to give the impression that its claims of a £14 billion cash boosts for schools had been independently validated by the BBC. This is not the only case in which Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has manipulated the truth on social media to deceive voters. It is telling that when I asked what disciplinary action had been taken against the officials responsible for this case, there was no response.