This series of articles examines and fact checks some of the Vote Leave and Britain Stronger in Europe arguments for voting to Leave or Remain in the European Union. For a short summary of both sides’ arguments look here.
Britain Stronger in Europe Claim: We Get Out More Than We Put In
And we get out more than we put in. Our annual contribution is equivalent to £340 for each household and yet the CBI says that all the trade, investment, jobs and lower prices that come from our economic partnership with Europe is worth £3000 per year to every household.
Verdict: Mostly true, but with the caveat that the £3000 is a ballpark figure, and not necessarily entirely accurate.
Analysis:
We’ve heard a lot in recent days and weeks about Vote Leave’s controversial £350m figure of how much money we send to the EU each week. There have been numerous fact checks on that, and I won’t cover it here, except to say that it has widely been shown to be false.
That said, how to Britain Stronger in Europe’s economic claims hold up?
First:
We get out more than we put in
In terms of raw money, no, but in terms of benefit to our economy, then yes, this seems to be the consensus.
As I found in a previous article, the benefits of EU membership to the UK are roughly between 5 and 15 times the UK’s net contribution to the EU.
Second:
Our annual contribution is equivalent to £340 for each household
The UK’s net contribution to the EU is estimated at about £9bn a year, and with the ONS calculating there are 27 million households, it comes out to almost exactly £340. Can’t complain about this figure.
Third:
the CBI says that all the trade, investment, jobs and lower prices that come from our economic partnership with Europe is worth £3000 per year to every household
This third claim, about the economic benefit of membership of the EU is perhaps the most difficult to calculate and the most controversial. Firstly, the Leave side would say that trading with other countries would give us similar benefits, or perhaps even greater, and secondly the figures are far from clear cut.
The CBI report which the figure comes from, which is well worth a read, makes it clear that this number isn’t a hard and fast guarantee, but an estimate.
They say: “There is an unavoidable degree of uncertainty over this judgment, and the benefit may be smaller, but it could also be considerably larger.”
This figure has been criticised, but taking into account that the CBI aren’t exactly pedestrians when it comes to calculating the impact on businesses, we should see it as a direction of travel as opposed to pin-point accurate. The CBI thinks Brexit is bad for the economy, and they’re not alone there.
In short, the £3,000 figure isn’t 100% accurate, but it doesn’t claim to be. Perhaps Britain Stronger in Europe shouldn’t have used it so prominently.