Facts
When speaking with Trevor Phillips on Sky News Sajid Javid said “This is a government that delivers on its promises”. Mr Phillips did not challenge this claim.
This website documents many broken promises made by the Johnson Government.
To list a few: the promise that “There will be no checks on goods going from GB to NI and NI to GB”; the manifesto pledge that “We will not raise the rate of income tax, VAT or National” Insurance.”; the promise of “50,000 more nurses”; the commitment that Britian would be “relocating another 5,000 Afghans this year” and that “More trade will not come at the expense of the environment”.
In the light of the rise in National Insurance on April 6th 2022, Adam Bienkov, political correspondent of Byline Times, produced a useful list of broken promises from the 2019 Conservative manifesto. These read as follows:
The Conservative manifesto also promised to solve the UK’s social care crisis, pledging that in future no individual would be forced to sell their home in order to pay for their care. The Prime Minister said that he would “end the injustice” of the elderly being forced to sell up. However, Johnson last year watered down this pledge, with ministers admitting that some people still would have to do so.
In 2019, Boris Johnson committed to building a new high speed connection between Leeds and Manchester, saying: “I am going to deliver on my commitment to that vision with a pledge to fund the Leeds to Manchester route.” The promise was central to the Prime Minister’s claims to be ‘levelling up’ the country. However, last year he broke this pledge, with local leaders labelling it a “great Northern rail betrayal”.
One of Johnson’s most-repeated pledges has been his promise to build “40 new hospitals” across the country. However, the pledge, which was contained within the Conservatives’ manifesto, is not quite what it seemed. In reality, the Government has no intention of building 40 new hospitals before the next election. As ministers have since admitted, the plan only involves rebuilding some existing hospitals, while putting in place other plans to build new ones over the coming decades.
Another key pledge broken from the 2019 manifesto was the Conservatives’ promise to keep the energy price cap and “lower bills”. As almost everyone reading this will have realised, both of those pledges have now been broken. For around 18 million households on standard tariffs, bills have now risen by an average of around £700 with those on pre-payment meters paying even more.
Johnson’s manifesto also contained the promise to maintain the pledge to spend 0.7% of GDP on international aid. Johnson ripped up this promise last year, cutting it to just 0.5% and depriving some of the poorest nations of the world of billions of pounds in aid. Reacting to the decision at the time, the campaign group Global Justice Now said that “every MP who has voted to sever the UK’s 0.7% commitment should know that blood is on their hands”.
Boris Johnson caused outrage after performing a double U-turn on his pledge to ban what he said was the “abhorrent” practice of gay conversion therapy. However, the decision to exclude trans people from the reinstated ban has infuriated LGBT organisations, almost all of which pulled out of the Government’s planned upcoming international LGBT conference. As a result, Equalities Minister Liz Truss this week cancelled the conference, thereby breaking the Conservatives’ 2019 general election pledge to hold one.
Boris Johnson promised to continue to raise the state pension by either CPI inflation, wage growth or 2.5% – whichever was highest. Last year, the Prime Minister broke this pledge, meaning that the triple lock will not apply for this year [2022].
Verdict
Sajid Javid’s statement was wrong. It is easy to demonstrate that the Johnson government has broken numerous promises, many of which have been documented on the website.
We approached Sajid Javid’s office and the Department for Health and Social Care to give them a chance to comment, but received no response.