Fact check: Image of Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been manipulated

The Conservative Party shared a doctored photograph of the Chancellor.

Friday 25 October 2024 11:10

Rachel Reeves in her office at no 11 Downing Street (Jordan Pettitt/PA) (PA Wire)

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The Conservative Party has shared an image of Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves with a caption reading “zoom in to find out what Labour are planning for the budget”.

When users zoom in on the picture it appears to show that Ms Reeves is holding a document titled “OFFICIAL LABOUR DOCUMENT. Our Plan to raise Taxes on Working People”.

Evaluation

This image has been doctored, the original shows no such document.

The facts

Rachel Reeves is set to present her first budget on Wednesday October 30.

Performing a reverse image search on the photograph leads to the website of PA’s stock imagery agency Alamy where the image is captioned: “London, 19th July 2024. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, arrives ahead of a visit by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, to Downing Street in London today.”

Enlarging that photograph makes it apparent that Ms Reeves was not holding the paper seen in the photograph shared by the Conservatives.