Can you trust the general election leaflets in Kirklees?

The political propaganda has been landing on your doormat for a few weeks now.

Election material is being delivered by hand and Royal Mail on a daily basis to homes throughout the country.

Some of the locally prepared leaflets makes promises about what the candidate will achieve or list achievements they claim they are responsible for.

But how do you know if they’re true?

The level of honesty has sunk to an all time low at this general election and fact check organisations have called out a number of untruths and statements of misinformation or disinformation in the national political arena.

Here we look at some of the more questionable claims by our candidates in the hotly anticipated election next week and try to analyse their accuracy.

We admit we haven’t seen them all, but we’ve read most and these are the ones that stood out.

Jason McCartney – Conservative (Colne Valley)

Claim: “Labour run Kirklees Council has imposed a Local Plan on our area and they are using this to ride roughshod over the views of local residents.”

Fact check: The Local Plan is a mandatory policy by a government who are pushing for more homes to be built. The Labour run council did earmark which sites to include but an extensive public consultation lasting more than two years was held where the views of local residents were heard. A government appointed planning inspector spent over six months reviewing the plan and the thousands of public comments. She made some changes but overall gave it the go-ahead. If the council had not gone through the three year exercise to do a Local Plan, the government would have imposed one of its own on Kirklees. So it seems a stretch to blame the Labour council for imposing a plan when the reality is it is being imposed on them.

Claim: “As I did when I was your local MP between 2010-17, I will continue to fight for our local NHS and education services. Huddersfield Royal Infirmary has been saved and received further investment from our Conservative government.”

Fact check: This is a little subjective as it’s difficult to quantify what one person is doing to fight for a service. No one can deny Mr McCartney was frequently seen joining the Hands Off HRI campaign during 2016. In the months before he lost his seat it was revealed he had only held one meeting with a Department for Health minister during the peak of the campaign. At the time he claimed he had held many informal meetings and said he had met then Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and joined a cross party NHS committee. The government has backed the hospital trust with circa £197m in investment, however it is thought only £22m of that is for Huddersfield.

Claim: Not a verbal one but a photo of Jason with the incumbent Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, outside of Slaithwaite Health Centre that has been used on one of his flyers. The health centre was at the centre of a high profile campaign to save it from hefty budget cuts and many believe the photo has been used on Mr McCartney’s literature to imply he was involved in the ultimately successful campaign.

Fact check: It’s not known what Mr McCartney did behind the scenes but members of Slawit Health Centre SOS are adamant he had no involvement in the campaign. In 2016 the group wrote to Mr McCartney to complain after he refused to meet them to accept a petition to save the centre or speak on their behalf in parliament.

Paula Sherriff – Labour (Dewsbury)

Claim: “We’ve already seen our local A&E services cut and downgraded – both Dewsbury District Hospital and Huddersfield Royal Infirmary have been hit. Ultimately this leaves the whole of Kirklees – some 430,000 people – without full A&E provision.

Fact check: This is partly true but also slightly dangerous as it might make people think we don’t have a full A&E. The definition of a “full A&E” is a little subjective, the fact is if you need emergency treatment for a life threatening incident in Kirklees you may well get it in Kirklees. Both Dewsbury and HRI still have fully functioning A&Es that will treat a large range of conditions. What is true is that the most seriously ill people who are being transported by ambulance for emergency care are likely to be taken out of the borough, either to Halifax, Leeds or Pinderfields where specialist teams are based.

Barry Sheerman – Labour (Huddersfield)

Claim: “I am consistently one of the most active MPs in parliament, fighting for the right policies for Huddersfield and ensuring your voice is heard loud and clear.”

Fact check: Mr Sheerman is often accused of doing nothing for Huddersfield in the comments of ExaminerLive stories or on Facebook, but his claim of being one of the most active MPs does have some merit. Mr Sheerman made the most contributions to debates in parliament of any Labour MP between 2010-2015 and was ranked third overall out of all 651 MPs at the time.

Tracy Brabin – Labour (Batley & Spen)

Claim: “Under the Tories £3,600 is spent per person on transport nationally but in Yorkshire it’s just £511.”

Fact check: This could just be a bit of lazy writing as the figures are correct. What’s not exactly right is the definition. The £3,600 figure is the London spend, which some say has been inflated in recent years by the incredibly expensive £18bn Crossrail project.

Mark Eastwood – Conservative (Dewsbury)

Claim: “Mark will continue to work alongside local residents to oppose any unsuitable developments. He will ensure that any planned developments deliver suitable housing for the area which does not harm the natural environment.”

Fact check: If elected, Mr Eastwood would not have much influence over local planning matters as they are all decided by Kirklees Council or the Planning Inspectorate. MPs can lobby the council, and their opinion carries perhaps a little more weight than a regular resident, but ultimately the most controversial planning decisions are made by a committee of councillors and that decision is guided by national planning policy. The ruling party on the council gets the most councillors on the planning committees, and let’s be honest, despite planning committees supposedly being politically neutral, they do tend to vote together.