Round-up of fact checks from the last few days compiled by Full Fact.
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.
Has Reform UK said it would keep free prescriptions in Wales?
Speaking on a TV programme last week, Welsh First Minister and Welsh Labour leader Eluned Morgan claimed Reform UK has not committed to continuing free prescriptions in Wales.
This isn’t correct. While Reform UK’s Welsh manifesto did not mention prescriptions, the party has said publicly elsewhere that it would keep them free.
On March 17, during an earlier televised debate, Reform’s Senedd candidate for Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd, James Evans, said: “Reform UK will keep the NHS free at the point of delivery, and we will keep free prescriptions.”
This clip was shared by Reform UK Wales on Facebook and X the same day. We’ve also found Reform UK Wales’ accounts have shared social media posts from other Reform Senedd candidates and local branches that explicitly say the party would keep free prescriptions.
NHS prescriptions have been free for anyone who lives in Wales since charges were abolished by the Welsh Government under Labour in 2007.
A Reform UK spokesperson told Full Fact that the party has consistently said it would keep free prescriptions in Wales and described Welsh Labour’s claim as “untrue”. Since Baroness Morgan’s comments, Reform UK’s leader in Wales Dan Thomas has also said that his party would keep the policy.
A Welsh Labour spokesperson told us: “Nigel Farage has repeatedly talked about different models of funding the NHS including privatisation, which would see people pay for their care, including prescriptions. There is no commitment in the Reform UK Wales manifesto to maintain free prescriptions.”
AI-generated videos of upturned dinghies in the English Channel
Videos liked thousands of times on Facebook supposedly show overturned dinghies in the English Channel.
One such video has been shared with claims that over 100 lives were lost in a single crossing, while another claims 23 are “feared missing”.
But these videos aren’t real and were made with artificial intelligence. And while six people have sadly died in April while attempting to cross the Channel, there are no reports of 100 people dying in one crossing (although dinghies do sometimes roughly carry this number of people).
According to Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, in 2025 there were 24 confirmed deaths relating to Channel crossings.
When we put the videos through Google’s large language model (LLM) Gemini it told us all of them had a SynthID digital watermark in both the audio and visual components, indicating they were generated or at least altered with Google AI.
There are also a number of other clues they were made with AI, such as the blurred cliffs in the background and glitches on the debris in the sea.
Before sharing clips such as these, first consider whether they come from a verifiable and trustworthy source. Our guide to spotting AI content and toolkit on how to identify bad information can help you do this.
