A steady blast of misinformation has vitiated the debate over whether Britain should stay or leave the European Union thus hindering rather than helping the voter in making an informed choice in the in-out referendum on June 23.
In the marketplace of claims and counter-claims over Brexit, the inconsequential jostles with the overblown. At one end there is Boris Johnson, former London Mayor and a lead figure in the Leave campaign who argues that the EU micromanagement extends to specifying the precise number of bananas in a bunch on sale, while at the other Prime Minister David Cameron prophesies a third world war if Britain exits Europe.
A report released on Friday by a cross-party Treasury Select Committee, set up to assess the economic and financial costs and benefits of the country’s EU membership, has tried to penetrate the dense thicket of exaggeration and misinformation that surrounds the debate.
“The public debate is being poorly served by inconsistent, unqualified and, in some cases, misleading claims and counter-claims. Members of both the ‘leave’ and ‘remain’ camps are making such claims,” the cross-party group states in its report.
For example, it says that the claim by Lord Rose, Chairman of the Stronger In campaign that households will benefit by £3,000 per year from EU membership “does not make sense”, without describing the alternate arrangement under which those benefits would be lost.
Similarly, it describes as “not meaningful” the claim by Boris Johnson of the Vote Leave campaign, that EU membership raises food bills for British families by £400 per year owing to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) — without indicating how U.K. agriculture would be supported after Brexit.
The Committee however reserves its sharpest rebuke for the two magic figures help up by the two sides to sustain their core economic arguments. Vote Leave routinely cites the figure of £350 million that the UK pays into the EUs coffers per week as a contribution. If Britain left the EU this could be spent on priorities “like the NHS and schools.” The Committee has called this “highly misleading.”
First, it says the figure does not account for the budget rebate of £85 million a week. Second, the U.K. receives EU funding of £88 million per week to the public sector and £79 million to the private and non-governmental sector per week. The Leave side has promised to protect these financial allocations, which would leave the government a much lower sum to fund schools and hospitals.
Stronger In, on the other hand, flaunts the magic figure of £11 billion in its arguments. The cost of imports into the U.K. could rise by £ 11 billion “at least” as a result of Brexit it claims. As the report point out, this figure is based on the assumption that the UK will place the same tariffs on imports as does the EU currently. “Given that the pursuit of an independent trade policy is at the heart of the case for leaving, this seems to be an implausible assumption,” the report states, concluding that the figure is “unhelpful and tendentious and should not be used without extensive explanation.”
