Scottish waiting lists, Easter eggs and rumours about a Plymouth hotel

This roundup 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.

Are one in six Scots ‘stuck on an NHS waiting list’?

In social media posts last week, Labour MP Gregor Poynton claimed that “one in six Scots are stuck on an NHS waiting list”, but this figure isn’t reliable.

In fact, the best estimates we have from Public Health Scotland suggest it is more like one in 10 people in Scotland (or 578,804 individual patients) who were on an inpatient, day case or new outpatient waiting list at the end of February.

Figures available at the time Mr Poynton made his claim estimated that it was around one in nine Scots who were on at least one of these three types of waiting list.

We didn’t receive a response when we contacted Mr Poynton, but it’s likely this claim is based on a calculation made by Scottish Labour.

We’ve seen the party make the same claim before, as well as other MPs, MSPs and the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Scottish Labour has previously told us its figure was calculated by looking at the waiting lists for inpatient and outpatient appointments, as well as for eight key diagnostic tests.

But just adding these figures together doesn’t tell you how many individual people are waiting overall, as the same person can be waiting for multiple different things and so counted more than once.

The party has also told us it considered Public Health Scotland’s figure to be an underestimate, as it doesn’t include patients waiting for a range of other NHS treatments.

It’s true that Public Health Scotland’s figure doesn’t include people waiting for diagnostic tests, as well as waits for other NHS services and appointments.

But figures aren’t available for how many individuals are on these waiting lists, so Public Health Scotland’s estimate is the best one we have that avoids double counting.

Cadbury still sells chocolate ‘Easter’ eggs in the UK
Every spring we see familiar false claims that Cadbury no longer uses the word ‘Easter’ on its chocolate egg range.

These claims are as untrue this year as they have been in the past .

A spokesperson for Mondelez International, the company that owns Cadbury, told us: “Cadbury has used the word Easter in our marketing and communications for over 100 ​years and ​continue to ⁠do so with our new Easter product range.

To claim anything ​otherwise is factually incorrect.”
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False claims spread online about Plymouth hotel housing asylum seekers
Claims that a historic Plymouth hotel has closed for refurbishment in order to house asylum seekers have been circulating on Facebook.

But both the hotel in question and the local council have confirmed these rumours are false .

In a statement, the Duke of Cornwall Hotel said it was: “temporarily closed to undertake an essential improvement project”, and would be reopening to guests in the summer.

Plymouth City Council has also described the rumours as “fake news” and confirmed that “there are no hotels in the city, open or closed being prepped for this purpose”.

It also noted that no hotels in the city are being used as asylum hotels.

The council previously stated on its website that as of August 2025 , asylum seekers in the city were only accommodated in privately rented “self-contained properties” such as flats and houses, and not in hotels.

We contacted the account originally making the claim asking if it had any evidence, but have not received a response.