The EU debate - Part III

He said that the figure was larger that the £350m promoted by Leave - a lie

He said it could go to the hospitals,GP's and schools - a lie

 

Brexit Commons vote 'could damage EU negotiations'
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-11-06/brexit-commons-vote-could-damage-eu-negotiations/?

 

May: I won't allow Remain supporters to tie my hands in Brexit negotiations
http://www.itv.com/news/2016-11-06/...ters-to-tie-my-hands-in-brexit-negotiations/?

 

We won't have free trade with that market you imbecile. There'll be tariffs, beaurocracy and delays in the supply chain unless we retain our single market access.

We're a nation who's manufacturing base is largely foreign owned and they produce good here for the EU market, without single market access and facing the prospect of tariffs they be forced over time to relocate to the far larger market.

How anyone can't grasp this simple fact is beyond me.

 

Pete's not taken the court ruling well at all which goes completely against his previous demands for British democracy.

 

Prepare to lose the vote then, you trouser suit full of **** all.

 

Theresa May is promising Brexit "in full"
http://www.cityam.com/253002/theresa-may-promising-brexit-full?

 

Theresa May warns MPs and peers to 'accept what the people decided' on Brexit
https://www.politicshome.com/news/e...a-may-warns-mps-and-peers-accept-what-people?

 

I can see why that piece appealed to you

 

It was a selective use of figures rather than a lie. They're figures from the ONS pink book.

The true figure is still high and the claim it could be spent on UK services by the UK Government is true.

 

There are plenty thay may go against the Gov, so thats why I can see the gov going for a GE next Feb

 

The people decided to leave in an opinion poll.

Parliament will now decide what's best for the country in terms of delivering on that decision

Her hiding behind the 'will of the people' soundbite is meaningless ****e. The people didn't vote to torch the economy, and it's your job to ensure that doesn't happen you useless old hag

 

I can see that, and it will destroy the labour party, and the lack of a credible opposition will seriously damage democracy.

 

we still have UKIP and the Official Monster Raving Loony Party

 

Owen Smith: Early Election Would Decimate Labour
http://www.lbc.co.uk/politics/parties/labour/owen-smith-early-election-would-decimate-labour/?

 

It's not true at all, and never was, it was less than half of that figure and it'll be wiped out by the Tories if they reduce corporation tax to 10% as they've already mooted.

That's before you calculate what a hard Brexit would do to our economy over the longer term which would be way in excess of the 0.4% of GDP that we've 'saved'.

There never was a saving that the kind of Brexit that Farage wants, would deliver, the whole argument was simplistic nonsense.

 

EXCL Labour by-election candidate Christian Wolmar called on Jeremy Corbyn to quit
https://www.politicshome.com/news/u...l-labour-election-candidate-christian-wolmar?

 

We could use some of it to rebuild the industries that the EU (partially with our money) induced to move the mainland.

 

It's not a matter of what we prefer, it's a matter of the Law of the Land. Only Parliament can make or repeal laws. The EU laws have precedence only because Parliament legislated to make it so. Invoking Article 50 has the inevitable consequence of repealing European law in the UK since it leads to us leaving automatically in two years if the negotiations fail to reach agreement.
Actually the tough negotiating strategy would be not invoking Article 50 until we had an agreement.

 

The UK's EU membership fee

The UK pays more into the EU budget than it gets back.

In 2015 the UK government paid £13 billion to the EU budget, and EU spending on the UK was £4.5 billion. So the UK’s ‘net contribution’ was estimated at about £8.5 billion.

Each year the UK gets an instant discount on its contributions to the EU—the ‘rebate’—worth almost £5 billion last year. Without it the UK would have been liable for £18 billion in contributions.


The UK doesn’t pay or "send to Brussels" this higher figure of £18 billion, or anything equivalent per week or per day. The rebate is applied straight away, so the UK never contributes this much.

The UK’s contributions to the budget vary from year to year. They’ve been larger recently than in previous decades.

UK contributions to the EU budget since 1973

A membership fee isn’t the same as the economic cost or benefit

Being in the EU costs money but does it also create trade, jobs and investment that are worth more?

We can be pretty sure about how much cash we put in, but it’s far harder to be sure about how much, if anything, comes back in economic benefits. “There is no definitive study of the economic impact of the UK’s EU membership or the costs and benefits of withdrawal”, as the House of Commons Library says.

£55 million a day doesn't include the rebate and is not based on recommended figures

The claim that the UK’s membership fee is £55 million a day comes from the £20 billion annual UK payment to EU institutions listed in the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) Pink Book.

The ONS told us this isn’t the correct figure to use. It has another set of figures which actually represent official government payments, although this isn’t clear from the release.

The £20 billion figure includes payments to EU institutions by UK households, and so doesn’t represent what the government pays as a ‘membership fee’.

The Treasury has more up to date estimates than the ONS, and uses slightly different accounting methods. They show we paid in £13 billion in 2015.

We previously said that “it's reasonable to describe £55 million as our ‘membership fee’, but it ignores the fact that we get money back as well.”

This was based on the understanding that the rebate is paid up front and then sent back, which we now know is wrong.

£350 million a week doesn’t include the rebate but uses better figures

It’s also been claimed that we send £350 million a week to the EU. That also misses out the rebate, although is based on better figures for the UK’s contributions.

£350 million is what we would pay to the EU budget, without the rebate.

But the UK actually pays just under £250 million a week.

The UK Statistics Authority has said the EU membership fee figure of £19 billion a year, or £350 million a week, is "not an amount of money that the UK pays to the EU each year".

£500 billion cost since joining the EU has the same problem

A further claim is that, if you add up the UK’s payments to the EU budget since 1973, we’ve contributed nearly £500 billion in total.

It uses the correct ONS figures on official contributions, although the ONS published slightly revised figures earlier this week. It also factors in inflation to reflect the rise in prices over the last four decades.

But it still doesn’t account for our rebate, so doesn’t represent what we have actually paid. Applying the discount reduces the figure to about £380 billion, or £9 billion a year.

The UK gets money back

The government then gets some of that money back, mainly through payments to farmers and for poorer areas of the country such as Wales and Cornwall.

In 2015, the UK's ‘public sector receipts’ amounted to £4.5 billion

So overall we paid in £8.5 billion more than we got back, or £23 million a day.

The Treasury figures note payments the EU makes directly to the private sector, such as research grants. In 2013, these were worth an estimated £1.4 billion, so including them could reduce our net contribution further still.

The money we get back will be spent on things the government may or may not choose to fund if we left the EU. It’s not enough to look at the net contribution in isolation because what we get back isn’t fully under our control.

Different figures from different sources

The Treasury's European Union Finances release provides the best figures for the UK’s contributions to the EU budget, according to the ONS.

The Treasury and ONS both publish figures on the subject, but they're slightly different. The ONS also publishes other figures on contributions to EU institutions which don't include all our payments or receipts, which complicates matters.

The ONS figures ultimately come from the Treasury, and the numbers aren't the same because they categorise and account for the payments differently.

The European Commission is still another source of information which shows lower contributions.

Correction 25 February 2016

We replaced the original article from 2014 with a more detailed explanation. We’ve corrected what we said about the claim that the UK’s EU ‘membership fee’ is £55 million a day, as noted in the text above.

Update 27 May 2016

We've added the UK Statistics Authority's views on the claim that we send "£350 million a week" to the EU.

https://fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-membership-fee-55-million/