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Mail and the referendum: campaign or propaganda

18/6/2016

3 Comments

 
On March 22 this year the newspaper industry presented the Daily Mail with the Hugh Cudlipp award to honour its "campaigning panache serving an unknowing and vulnerable public".
The prize was for the paper's efforts to secure a clampdown on the way some charities treated supporters and fundraisers - an issue that came to public attention with the suicide of 92-year-old poppy seller Olive Cooke who had been bombarded with cold calls and mailshots from nearly a hundred charities
The Mail was quick off the mark and once it got the bit between its teeth, it was unstoppable.
​
By this time next week we shall have discovered how "unknowing and vulnerable" Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are. What we have already seen is that the Mail is even more tenacious in their service than it was for the charity collectors.
The Mail's campaign to secure a vote to leave the EU was in full swing a month before it collected the Cudlipp award, and it has been relentless ever since.
Campaigning journalism is an honourable pursuit. But there is a line between campaigning for a cause you believe to be right and propaganda. And with its Brexit coverage, the Mail has stepped over that line.
It is not alone in following a pro-Leave agenda. The Express has been even more blatant, producing bigoted xenophobic papers that display the fearful selfishness of a child who has never been taught to share, toys clutched to his chest in case that unwelcome visitor from across the road might like to play with one. 
The Sun may be less mean-spirited, but it is also aggressively anti-Europe,  and the Telegraph has hardly been impartial. So why pick on the Mail?
Because it is the most dangerous.
The Sun is still - just - our top-selling newspaper, but its influence is waning; advertisers are deserting it and politicians no longer court it the way they used to. With circulations around the half-million mark (let's be generous), the Express and Telegraph aren't in the same league.
The Mail, though, is  by far the biggest news brand across print and web, reaching more than 10 million people every day. If Britain votes to leave the EU next week, the paper might well be justified in stealing the Sun's clothes and declaring "It was the Mail what won it".
Depending on your view of Europe, that might be a good thing for the country.
But it won't be a good thing for journalism.

For, however strongly the paper believes that the UK would be better off out of Europe, it still has a duty to abide by the Editors' Code (which happens to be
overseen by its own editor). That doesn't oblige a paper to be neutral or even to offer balanced coverage, but it does demand accuracy and a clear distinction between comment, conjecture and fact. 
The pro-Europe InFacts organisation has reported a number of papers to Ipso, complaining that they have failed to measure up on accuracy. Of course judgments won't be handed down before polling day, and we can expect plenty more transgressions in the final week. Short of having a licensed Press - heaven forbid - there is nothing any regulator, Leveson recognised or not, can do to stop them.
And, anyway, the Mail is a slick organisation - easily the most professional outfit in Fleet Street. It knows exactly how to maintain "accuracy" while pushing its own agenda. It is far more likely to get caught out mixing up comment, conjecture and fact. 
So I thought it would be an interesting exercise to look closely at the Mail's tactics.
Picture
Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

1: When someone puts forward an argument for leaving the EU, make it the page lead.
Make the speaker sound as important as possible, as in "the head of one of Britain's biggest..."
Try not to give the Remain camp a right of reply, and certainly not more than a par or two at the end.


2: If someone who favours staying in the EU concedes a possible advantage to leaving, make that the intro - even if it runs counter to the thrust of the full comment/speech.

3: If giving prominence to a pro-Remain story is unavoidable, dilute the message, ideally by getting the retaliation in first, as in "Downing Street was accused of..."
​Always get a Vote Leave quote in the first six pars. 
Picture
4: Where possible, cast doubt on the credibility of the source of any pro-Remain story.
For financial and political types, a "fact box" showing how they have been wrong in the past is best.
For others, it is enough simply to question their right to express an opinion, perhaps by getting someone to suggest that they should stick to the day job (this can be done in a leader if there is no one available to supply the requisite quote).
Do not do this with pro-Brexit claims.
​

5: Get leading Brexit campaigners to write first-person pieces. Michael Gove (whose wife is a Mail columnist), Iain Duncan Smith, Priti Patel and Andrea Leadsom have obliged on several occasions.
Picture
Headline writing
1: Pro-Leave stories should have a positive heading. Words to use: thrive, boost, boom. 
Attribution is not necessary, but "Gove",  "Boris" or "IDS" are acceptable.


2: "Now" is a useful word when you want to say "guess what those idiots want us to believe this time", while staying within the Editors' Code.
​

3: Words to use when reporting Remain campaign stories: propaganda, doom, project fear, fury.
Foreign leaders, such as Barack Obama or Angela Merkel who think the UK should stay in Europe are bullying or lecturing us.
Picture
Who should we listen to?
1: John Longworth, former head of the CBI, "a hero crushed in a chilling witch-hunt against free speech". But not the "scaremongering" CBI

2: Norway, Holland and Switzerland (in certain circumstances). But not the leaders of Germany or the United States.

3: Cameron's former policy adviser Steve Hilton.  But not former Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell.

4: Big employers Tim Martin of Wetherspoons, Lord Bamford and James Dyson. But not BT, BMW or Rolls-Royce. There is "fury" when they warn their tens of thousands of employees about the risks of leaving.

5: Andrea Leadsom, "high flier" Energy Minister. But not her boss, Amber Rudd, whose brother Roland is a prominent Remain campaigner.

6: Penny Mordaunt, whose appearances in the Mail before the referendum campaign started were mostly in swimwear. But not William Hague, who used to be sound but never fulfilled his potential.
Picture
7: Ian Botham and John Cleese. But not Matt Damon, Eddie Izzard, foreign luvvies or Dave's luvvie army.

8: Military leaders. But not environmental charities.


9: Norman Lamont, who was Chancellor on Black Wednesday. But not John Major, who appointed him.

10: Still in the past: David Owen and Nigel Lawson (whose son writes for the Mail). But not Michael Heseltine and definitely not "spiv" Peter Mandelson.


11: Former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove and former CIA boss Michael Hayden. But not former CIA chief David Petraeus.

12: Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey when he says immigration has reached dangerous levels, and present incumbent Justin Welby, when he says it's not racist to worry about immigration.
But Welby is not to be believed when he says the poor would suffer most from Brexit. On that we should trust Iain Duncan Smith who says the poor would suffer most from staying in.


13: Boris, when he says the EU is like the Third Reich. But not Dave, when he says it has saved us from war. 

14: Cameron and Osborne's fathers-in-law. But not Cameron or Osborne. 

15: Michael Gove's father if he's talking to the Mail or Star about his defunct fishing business. Bute not if he's talking to the Guardian or Mirror.

16: Any member of the public who challenges Cameron. But not any former living Prime Minister.
Dead ones, such as Churchill and Thatcher are to be believed if they are deemed to support the Brexit cause, but not if Fatty Soames starts spouting about his Grandad.
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What about the money experts?
This is tricky.
​The general rule is don't believe bankers - they are the people who caused the global financial crisis in 2008 and so sacrificed any right to be heard ever again.

But it's ok to listen to Antonio Horta-Osario, the Portuguese head of Lloyds (even though we don't generally like to be dictated to by foreigners), and to former HSBC chief Michael Geoghegan (even though the bank is now guilty of "talking down" the pound). Gerard Lyons, a former Standard Chartered economist who advises Boris Johnson, can also be trusted.


Goldman Sachs is sound when its analysts suggest that we'd be fine outside of Europe, but not as a US giant bank-rolling the Remain campaign -  and definitely not as Bank of England Governor Mark Carney's alma mater.

Carney himself should keep his mouth shut - except when he's saying that leaving the EU won't destroy the economy. Mervyn King, who is known to be critical of the euro, should be encouraged to speak up about the EU. So far he hasn't obliged.

Banks such as JP Morgan and Citigroup, which threaten to pull out of the UK after a Brexit are trying to bully us.
​

The IMF, World Bank, OECD and IFS are all to be doubted, but the Chamber of Commerce is reliable, and fund manager Peter Hargreaves is so well-informed that his views are reported at every opportunity. 

Some case studies
Over the past four months, the Mail has produced hundreds of news pages, scores of leaders, and printed dozens of opinion pieces about the EU. It's impossible to reproduce them all here, but it would be nice to highlight a few.​
Picture
It is the function of newspapers to sift through events and to share with their readers those that they believe to be most important or relevant. Stuff will always get left out.
Last March, the Mail ran a factbox alongside a Bank of England report suggesting that Brexit might hit investment from overseas. It listed
foreign firms that were giving the UK a "vote of confidence" , including Toyota, Nissan and Airbus, who had all said they would continue production in the UK even if it left the EU.  The three also featured in a Leave campaign leaflet.
This week Airbus, GE and Unilever complained to Vote Leave about the use of their logos, saying that it misrepresented their view on Europe, which was to remain. Toyota and Nissan, which have stated their belief that Britain would be better off in Europe, were also said to have been upset.
​The FT and Independent both splashed on the firms threatening to sue; the Mail did not report the story.

Picture
The Mail has reported on positive signs for the UK economy, and noted that exports to the rest of the EU have fallen as a proportion of global sales.
​It did not, however, report the sharp falls in the FTSE index after polls showed the Leave camp in the ascendancy.
Nor did the Sun. Indeed, after four days of trading that saw losses reach £100bn, it found an analyst to predict that leaving the EU would act as a "rocket boost" for shares, lifting them by 5%. Share values had fallen by 6% over the previous week. 

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A Treasury Select Committee report in May criticised both sides of the debate for some of their claims. The most serious, it said, was the use of the slogan "We give the EU £350m a day, let's spend it on the NHS instead" on Boris Johnson's battlebus.
The committee also questioned the Chancellor's assertion that families would be an average of £4,300 worse off if Britain left the EU.
The Mail majored on the criticism of the Remain claims, but its sub-head mentioned that both campaigns had come under attack. SubScribe felt that most newspapers' coverage of the report was poor.
For all its support of the Leave agenda, the Mail does not appear ever to have reported or endorsed the £350m a day c
laim.

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In March Penny Mordaunt came under Andrew Pierce's scrutiny as part of a spread about female politicians who "flaunted their assets". He said nobody had taken any notice of her until she took part in the TV diving show Splash in 2014 and from that time on, the Mail's preferred photograph of her was this one in the blue bathing costume.
Until she started arguing for Brexit. Now she is the Armed Forces Minister and is always pictured in businesswear, complete with Maggie-style handbag
.

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This pair of stories is from the foot of the spread on May 31.  One retired insurer, Robert Hiscox, is given eight paragraphs to attack the Remain campaign's propaganda. He is deemed credible because he chaired his company for 43 years ("Lloyds of London insurer" is thrown in to make him sound more important than he is: virtually every insurer in the country could be so described). There is no counter view, just his opinion.
Sitting alongside is a story about 307 Cambridge academics expressing concern about the effect of leaving the EU on universities. There is no counter view here, either, but a reference back to the fears of 150 Royal Society fellows expressed two months previously. And then, in a couple of blob pars at the bottom, we learn that "the world-famous theorietical physisist" Professor Stephen Hawking has also come out for Remain.
So the opinion of one retired insurer is equal to those of 458 academics - and four times as much as  our most renowned scientist.

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On May 23, the Mail was impatient with NHS chief Simon Stevens for saying that leaving the EU could damage the health service. He highlighted its 130,000 immigrant employees and its need for the economy in general to flourish. He also pointed to the importance of being part of the EU-wide drugs approval system - although the Mail didn't report that bit. It did, however, run a leader about the "supposedly independent head of NHS England making a blood-curdling (and totally uncorroborated) prediction". 
On June 7, the paper splashed on delays to the approval of a breast cancer drug caused by EU "red tape". It acknowledged that even if approved, the drug might be too expensive to be allowed by NICE, but there was no mention of how long it might take for such a drug to work its way through the testing system if Britain were not part of the EU mechanism - the very point Stevens was making.


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This trio comes from the bottom of the spread on June 14.
No paper could possibly list every politician who comes out on one side of the debate or the other, but the Mail knows what its readers think of Martin McGuinness and is therefore pleased to point out that he favours IN. It makes sure to mention his IRA connections in both the heading and the intro.
European Council president Donald Tusk came up with some dramatic imagery in an interview with Bild, including that he feared  a British vote to leave could be the beginning of the end of the EU and Western political civilisation. He also said that radical anti-European forces would be drinking champagne in the event of such a vote and that Brexit would be so dangerous because no one could foresee the long-term consequences: 
"Every family knows that a divorce is traumatic for everyone. Everyone in the EU, but especially the Brits themselves, would lose out economically,"
The Mail reports only half the "end of civilisation" quote, but manages two mentions of Project Fear and devotes three of the five pars to Leave campaigners, including the ever-reliable Priti Patel. It also runs a leader describing the interview as "the daftest scare yet".
​Sir Mike Wade's email to 80,000 BT workers gets a straight intro in the third story of this set, but by the second par, eurosceptics are "seizing on" his "track record as a cheerleader for Brussels" and the fact that he was against holding a referendum at all.
​We are then reminded that Wade was in favour of joining the euro in 2003, and we finish with a quote from arch-eurosceptic Bill Cash saying Wade should concentrate on improving BT. The headline is not on what Wade has done, but on some "fury" that is not apparent in the text.

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John Major was criticised for "descending into personal insults" when he appeared on the Andrew Marr show and described Boris Johnson as a court jester  (he also came up with the best quote of the entire campaign that the NHS was as safe with Gove, Johnson and IDS as a pet hamster with a hungry python).  As we see from the collection of cuttings above, the Mail is not averse to such tactics.
​It might argue that it's not the same, since the Mail isn't a politician or a participant in the debate.
Isn't it?
In the next few days, I shall try to count all the articles carried in the Mail, but that's going to take a while. What I can say is that there have been dozens of opinion pieces of which two - both by Max Hastings - have been in favour of remaining within the EU.
​The Express has run none.
In the meantime, the cloud below shows some of the headline words used in the Mail's news pages in relation to the Remain campaign.
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You can see all the coverage from the nine paid-for mainstream national newspapers for the final month of the campaign by returning to the home page and clicking on the front pages there.
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A plague on both their houses

31/5/2016

0 Comments

 
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The news presenter Jon Snow made headlines today with his complaint that the referendum battle was the worst-tempered, most boring and abusive campaign that he could remember. On Saturday Delia Smith wrote in the Guardian that the daily dose of scare tactics beggared belief and that the whole debate was "pants".
Instead of engaging the voters, our newspapers have done their bit to turn this pivotal decision for the future of the country into a pantomime. As Snow said in his piece for Radio Times, it's no way to run a chip shop.

Decent journalism involves listening to what people have to say, taking a view on how important it is, and covering it accordingly. Sometimes it is reasonable just to report what is said, along with any counter argument, and leave the readers to decide. At other times, the claims may be so contentious that they require some debunking. This can take the form of background in the body of the story, but it is often done best  in a sidebar, analysis or factbox.
That is what The Times did on Saturday with its own interview with Iain Duncan Smith.  It reported his assertions in a news story separate from the interview spread, and then let Economics Editor Philip Aldrick run the ruler over his claims in a "fact check" panel.

One of the disturbing features of this campaign is the number of stories that are blatantly slanted to favour one side of the argument - almost invariably the Leave campaign.
Detailed examples of such behaviour will follow later in the week, but the treatment of one story deserves closer examination.
​
On Saturday the i splashed on a Treasury Select Committee report of its inquiry into the economic and financial costs and benefits of the UK's EU membership. That may sound dry, but in its assessment of the conduct of the campaign so far, it was what we journalists like to describe as a hard-hitting report that pulled no punches.
Andrew Tyrie, the committee's Conservative chairman, accused the two sides of indulging in an "arms race of lurid claims" and of a "mountain of exaggeration". 
The introduction to the report states:
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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.
Of these "misleading" claims, Tyrie says that "by far the most serious" was the Leave campaign's assertion that Brexit would provide a £350m a week windfall that could be spent on the NHS.
Other claims questioned by the MPs included:
  • George Osborne's statement in the foreword to a Treasury paper that "families would be £4,300 worse off" as a result of Brexit;
  • that 3 million jobs were dependent on membership of the EU;
  • that the cost of imports would rise by at least £11bn after a Brexit,
  • that the CAP costs every household £400 a year in higher food bills,
  • that EU regulations cost businesses £600m a week, 
  • that households benefit by £3,000 per year from EU membership.
The committee, whose members come from all parties and both sides of the referendum debate,  was also scathing about the attitude to the committee's work of Vote Leave chiefs Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings. It described their behaviour as appalling and said they had failed to fulfil commitments made to the Electoral Commission that led to their being recognised as the official "Out" campaign.

The report - which makes the point that economics are only part of a debate that is really all about how the country (and Europe) should be governed - goes on to sift through the evidence presented by various witnesses and to emphasise the many imponderables in trying to picture the economic landscape after June 24. 
Right at the start it states:
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Both Leave and Remain campaign groups have made claims about the economic impact of EU membership and Brexit. These claims, which are often described as ‘facts’, have been made in campaign literature, in speeches by prominent spokespersons, and in evidence before the committee...
Many of these claims sound factual because they use numbers. They are not, however, facts, but claims underpinned by judgments and assumptions. Rarely have those judgments and assumptions been made adequately explicit. 
For voters, this report is one of the most useful documents to have been produced so far in the campaign. It was released on the Friday before a bank holiday weekend - a relatively quiet news day - and should have been a godsend for papers with Brexit pages to fill.
​ After all, as Jon Snow says, the negativity, bickering, foul-mouthing and wholesale abuse of the facts by both sides had seen off most attempts to make the vote interesting.

Yet the Guardian, Telegraph, Express and Star ignored it.
The Guardian's only "news" coverage of the day was Delia's front-page rant.
The Telegraph was more interested in comparing the countryside credentials of David Cameron (pictured bottle feeding a lamb) and Boris Johnson (pictured driving a tractor).
The Express was extolling the virtues of "Boris and Farage, the Brexit dream team" and worrying about a woman who'd spoken up on television about migrants jumping the queue for a council house. 
The Sun and Mirror each gave the story a couple of pars. 
That left the i's splash, which ran to 15 pars as the lead on its spread, and a little ragged-right jobbie on the Times's EU spread (rather tastelessly illustrated with a mushroom cloud explosion, presumably on the back of the "arms race" allusion). And the Mail.
The Mail was mostly focused on rubbishing Treasury projections on the threat to pensions, but it led the third page of its referendum coverage on the select committee report. Under this heading:
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A very large sub-head qualifies this by saying "Treasury panel savages In AND Out campaigns over misleading stats". But it is not until the fifth par of the text that we get the first mention of  the £350m windfall claim.
Ten of the sixteen paragraphs are devoted to questioning Leave campaign claims about household income and jobs; two are concerned with the £350m, including Tyrie's description of it as "by far the most serious offence".
So, if challenged, the Mail can legitimately say that the facts are there. It's just that - like the notes in Eric Morecambe's rendition of Grieg's piano concerto - they are not necessarily in the right order.

Naturally, long reports such as this have to be filleted to make them digestible for newspaper readers, but the end result should reflect the message of the original material. Especially when it comes from an independent source.
​
SubScribe commends the full report to anyone interested in making their own judgments about the possible risks and benefits of Brexit, but in the meantime, please bear with me as I quote some chunks of  what it says about the claims and counter-claims that the MPs found most egregious:

The £350m 'windfall'

At the heart of Vote Leave’s presentation of its case is the claim that, on leaving the EU, the UK Government would receive a windfall of £350m per week, available to be spent in other ways, “like the NHS and schools”. This, and the other figures used by Vote Leave for the UK’s EU budget contributions..are highly misleading to the electorate for a number of reasons.

First, Vote Leave’s £350m figure does not account for the budget rebate, which amounts to £85m per week. Leaving the EU could not make this money available to spend on schools and hospitals because it is not ‘sent’ to Brussels in the first place. The rebate does not leave the UK or cross the exchanges.

This is repeated in other ways. A ‘counter’ is prominently displayed on Vote Leave’s website. This purports to show that the UK has historically contributed £511bn to the EU since joining in 1973 and excludes the rebate. The UK rebate is indeed controversial in other member states. It may be raised in future negotiations over the EU’s financial framework. However, it can only be changed with the UK Government’s consent.

Secondly, the extent to which money that the UK receives from the EU budget (a further £88m per week to the public sector and £79m per week to the private sector and non-governmental organisations) would be available for spending on other priorities, would depend on the policy choices of the democratically-elected Government of the day. Vote Leave has stated that “There will [ … ] be financial protection for all groups that now get money from Brussels”. If that policy were implemented, the money available to fund other priorities after Brexit, such as schools and hospitals, would be much lower, and probably closer to the UK’s net contribution of £110 million per week than it is to £350 million. This would be true even if, as has been widely argued, efficiencies could be made in the way that money the UK currently receives from the EU budget is spent. 

Finally, it is not impossible that the UK may continue to make contributions to the EU budget after Brexit, either on a transitional or permanent basis, in return for continued access to parts of the single market, or because it considers mutual co-operation in certain areas, such as science research, to be desirable. This too would reduce the supposed fiscal windfall arising from leaving the EU. 

Vote Leave has said that £350m a week is “the core number”, and that it is using the number “again and again”. It is very unfortunate that they have chosen to place this figure at the heart of their campaign. This has been done in the face of overwhelming evidence...demonstrating that it is misleading.

Brexit will not result in a £350m per week fiscal windfall to the Exchequer as a consequence of ending the UK’s contributions to the EU budget. Despite having been presented with the evidence contradicting this claim, Vote Leave has subsequently placed the £350m figure on its campaign bus, and on much of its recent campaign literature. The public should discount this claim. Vote Leave’s persistence with it is deeply problematic. It sits very awkwardly with its promises to the Electoral Commission to work in a spirit that reflects its “very significant responsibility” and the “gravity of the choice facing the British people”. 


The effect of Brexit on household incomes

Figures purporting to measure the overall impact of EU membership or Brexit on GDP and household incomes are only meaningful if the counterfactual – the assumed alternative to EU membership – is clearly spelled out...This is not the case for the £3,000 figure used by the Stronger In campaign, or indeed any number that combines the findings of different studies with different counterfactuals. 

Most recent studies support remaining in the EU and find that Brexit decreases the UK’s openness to trade with the EU, which, other things being equal, causes a decline in investment and productivity. The key question is how far these negative effects are offset by the scope for increased openness to trade with the rest of the world, productivity gains from deregulation, and lower contributions to the EU budget...

Those who favour leaving the EU would argue that these studies are insufficiently optimistic or imaginative about how the UK would fare outside the EU. They could be right...

Even if the assumptions underpinning it are considered to be reasonable, the Treasury’s £4,300 figure is the result of two economic modelling exercises and a further assumption about the relationship between trade and economic productivity. Each of these three stages introduces uncertainty. Any specific numbers emerging from such an analysis should be subject to caveats and seen within the context of the forecast range presented by the Treasury...
​Presenting the figures on the impact of Brexit on a per household basis, as the Stronger In campaign has done, is likely to be misconstrued by readers, especially in the heat of a campaign, and probably has confused them. It may have left many readers thinking that the figures refer to the effect of leaving the EU on household disposable income, which they do not. The Remain campaign should have been alert to this risk...


The Treasury’s analysis contains a foreword from the Chancellor suggesting that “families would be £4,300 worse off” as a result of Brexit. But this is not what the main Treasury analysis found; the average impact on household disposable incomes would be considerably smaller than this number, which refers to the impact on GDP per household. Neither government departments nor other spokespeople for the remain side should repeat the mistaken assertion that household disposable income would be £4,300 lower than if we were to remain in the EU...to persist with this claim would be to misrepresent the Treasury’s own work...

It is disappointing that the Treasury and the Chancellor place so much emphasis on a single figure. Any single number that purports to encapsulate the effects of Brexit can be misunderstood...Using the range around this estimate — £3,200 to £5,400 — as well as a central forecast, and looking at average household income would both be useful ways of presenting the Treasury’s results. 


Trade tariffs

The Stronger In campaign’s claim that the cost of imports could rise by “at least” £11bn as a result of Brexit – and associated claims that leaving the EU would raise household bills – assumes 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 figure of £11bn is therefore unhelpful and tendentious and should not be used without extensive explanation. 

CAP and food bills

The figures used by some leave campaigners that the CAP costs £400 per household per year is based on out-of-date research. Using more up-to-date sources gives a figure that is much less than £300.

In any case, to suggest that this money would be “saved by Brexit” requires two assumptions to be made: that the Government would unilaterally eliminate all tariffs on agricultural goods on leaving the EU; and that it would not replace any of the subsidies and price support currently provided to UK farmers under the CAP.

This is inconsistent with Vote Leave’s stated position that farmers will be paid “at least as much as they get now” and Leave.EU’s position that farmers will not lose the money they currently receive from the EU. It is true that the UK is effectively a net contributor to the CAP. It is widely acknowledged, even by Lord Rose [head of the Stronger In campaign], that the money currently distributed to UK farmers through the CAP could be spent more efficiently. Nonetheless, the overall saving would fall short – perhaps well short – of £300 per household.


Employment

It is misleading to claim, as some campaign groups continue to do, that 3 million jobs are dependent on EU membership. Britain Stronger in Europe, the lead remain campaign group, has at least made clear in evidence to this committee, if not in some of its literature, that its use of the 3 million figure should not be taken to represent the number of jobs dependent on EU membership, but the number associated with trade with the EU.

Without an estimate of how much trade would be lost as a result of Brexit, the impact on job losses cannot readily be estimated. The wider public might form the mistaken impression that all these jobs
would be lost or at risk if the UK left the EU. Campaigners should be clear that 3 million jobs may be associated with, but would not necessarily be dependent on, our membership of the EU. 

A reduction in exports to the EU following Brexit would lead to a loss of jobs unless there were compensating effects from faster growth in trade with non-EU countries or to the extent that the UK’s relatively flexible labour markets meant that any impact from lower trade may be felt through lower wages than otherwise and a reduction in hours worked, rather than through the unemployment rate. 


Regulation

Withdrawing from the EU would give the UK an opportunity to alter the way its economy is regulated in some areas...It may save firms and consumers some money in the process. Open Europe itself considers that the maximum feasible regulatory savings from Brexit are £12.8bn per year, although achieving even these might involve political controversy.

Examples that Open Europe have counted under this category to reach this figure include: relaxing rules protecting workers’ entitlement to time off; holidays and redundancy protection; abandoning the current target for increasing the share of energy generated from renewable sources; and abandoning financial regulations such as emergency bans on “short-selling”, reporting and disclosure requirements and a cap on bankers’ bonuses.

In some cases, such as maternity rights and bank capital requirements, the UK currently regulates beyond the minimum EU standards.

Realising gains from deregulation would require the Government of the day to muster support for a new domestic approach. However, a future government would undoubtedly judge that the compliance costs of some, perhaps many, EU regulations are more than offset by the benefits.

In evidence to the committee, Vote Leave pointed out that what counts is not so much the cost, but the principle of having control over such regulations. This is reasonable. It may be a compelling political argument.

But if they wish to make a case on economic grounds, and use as they have done, figures purporting to measure the economic cost of EU regulation, it is incumbent on the leave campaigns to give at least some indication of which parts of the regulatory framework they would alter or scrap...
​
£33.3bn, or £600m per week, is an estimate of the total cost to firms of complying with the top 100 most "burdensome" EU regulations. It is not the net economic cost of regulation, nor is it a measure of the savings that would accrue to businesses as a result of Brexit. To assert this is misleading.
To persist with such a claim, as both Vote Leave and Leave.eu have done, is a tendentious representation of the research on which it is based.


You can read the full report here
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