The Big EU Reality Check

Days from now the UK will decide whether to remain in or leave the

EU. Both sides have been slugging it out on the campaign trail. Many

voters complain that when it comes to understanding the issues, they're

confused by what they're being told. There's a lot of ifs going on.

Bickering back-and-forth. A lot of confusion. It's too much for people

to take in. Nobody has the answers. I'm very conscious of being sold

fairy dust. People want leadership. People want vision. This programme

makes you a promise - you won't be hearing from any politicians. I

don't expect too much of politicians. It's completely made

up. They drive me up the wall.. Ledged facts that are bandied about.

We don't know the true facts. We only know what they want us to know.

You will hear from people across the UK, voters from both sides of the

debate. We don't know what's going to happen if we leave. We can

survive perfectly well outside the EU. I will try to cut through the

confusion and provide some of the answers. I will challenge claims

made by both sides on the biggest issues - the economy, immigration,

and sovereignty and I'll provide you with the facts, telling you what are

not facts and also what judgments only you can make. Then we'll see if

that makes any difference to what our voters think. I absolutely

believe that we should have our sovereignty back. There will be jobs

lost because of leaving. I don't know. It's not going to move me.

Will we be richer or poorer? That's the question many will ask before

voting on Thursday. Shall we stay in the world's largest economic club or

break free from a continent that's stagnating and a bureaucracy that's

holding us back? Let's examine some of the rival claims. Count the

number of cranes, that's one way of telling how well an economy is

doing. In recent years ours has been doing pretty well. The key argument

of those would want us to remain in the EU is that leaving will take us

on a journey which will leave us all poorer. Their most eye catching and

controversial claim is that every family in Britain would be ?4,300 a

year worse off by 2030. The claim that families would be worse off if

we left the EU is not a fact. It is based on an economic forecast by

treasurery officials. It's spun in a way to look as bad as possible and

in a way that a committee of all parties said was likely to confuse

voters. What is a fact is that economic forecasters are pretty much

agreed that leaving the EU will make us all worse off. People might say

you economic forecasters have often got things wrong in the past and you

may well be wrong again You've just got everyone saying this. There is

virtually no disagreement in the economics profession about this. In

the short run, uncertainty would grow, less foreign direct investment

would come in, the pound would go down, people consumes less, the

economy would suffer. Few doubt there will be a short-term hit to

our economy if we leave. But those would want us to get out argue that

Europe's stuck in the past, that Britain can benefit if we break free

and do more business with the rest of the world. So says the man who

used to head up the country's biggest organisation. I don't

actually believe that leaving the EU will be a serious economic blow.

Britain owned the 19th century, America owned the 20th, Asia owns

the 21 st. You have a Brussels marching towards 1970. We need to

keep being globally competitive so that we can afford quality pensions,

quality health care and welfare for our grandchildren. To do that we

need to make decisions which make us competitive. Brussels isn't doing

it. The just you need to make is this: Are all those forecasters

wrong? Are they being too pessimistic about what the fifth

largest economy in the world could achieve on its own? After all, they

didn't see the banking crisis coming, did they? Or do you conclude

if so many experts agree on the same thing, that Britain would be poorer

if we left, it is just possible they could be right. The EU is the

world's biggest free market area. As a member, we in Britain can sell our

goods and services to more than 500 million people in what's called the

sing the market, comprised of 28 countries, without having to pay

tariffs or taxes at national borders. The Remain camp say three

million British jobs are linked to being inside that single market.

Jobs, they say, which would be at risk if we had to negotiate a new

trade deal because we'd quit. The fact is no-one really believes that

we'll lose three million jobs if we leave the EU. After all, say the

leavers, the French will still want to sell us their cheese, the Germans

will still want to sell us cars. Reaching a new deal with the EU over

trade could be tricky. It took the Canadians seven years to negotiate

one. What's more, the things that Britain really makes money from,

services, like insurance and marketing and banking, they could be

the hardest things to get agreement over. There is no trade agreement

between any other country and the European Union which gives any

country anything like the access that you get being inside. We'll get

a deal, at some point, but it won't be as good as the deal we have at

the moment. That will make that trade more expensive. The trade

prospects of the United Kingdom outside the EU will be very much the

same as they are inside the EU. I don't see a change, simply because

it's in no-one's interested in a globalised economy to do otherwise.

The judgment you've got to make is this: If we leave the EU, if we walk

out of the single market, is it bound to be harder for us to trade

our goods and services? Are we bound to lose jobs? Or is that view simply

too pessimistic? Whatever the deal we get with the EU in future, could

we be freer to get new deals with the growing economies, like China

and India? Hold on, there's something else to

consider - don't we pay an awful lot of money to be members of this

European club? The claim from the vote Leave campaign is that we send

to Brussels ?350 million each and every week. There's only one problem

with the claim - it's not true. Britain doesn't send ?350 million a

week to Brussels. Mrs Thatcher got us a rebate. So that takes the

figure down to 276 million a week. And it doesn't end there. If you

then take off all the money that we get given back from Brussels, the

figure goes down again to ?161 million. The amount we stoned

Brussels each week may be a lot less than vote Leave sometimes want to

claim, but it's still a lot of money, adding up to ?8 billion a

year. Of course, if all those forecasters are right, any savings

you make by leaving the EU could be instantly wiped out simply because

the economy gets smaller. That is the judgment you need to make in the

end. Is it a membership fee for a club that makes us all richer or is

it money that is simply going down the drain? Having watched our

reality check on all those claims about the economy, what do our

voters think now? We're still paying a lot to be in the membership club,

it's a club membership. We don't need to be in that membership. We've

got a lot going that we don't need to be using an outsider to make

decisions. I know the Leave people say if we don't spend all this money

on Europe, we can fix the NHS. I just don't believe them for a

second. All those economic forecasters can't be wrong. It's

very unlikely that many people are going to be wrong. It's clear that

the economic community is united on this issue, that it will put a hit

to the economy and to households and families. It seems like the economy

will be hit more than I thought, if we leave. But I'm... You know, it

wasn't definite facts, was it? It was maybes. Leaving a bigger

economy, a bigger market where we can sell goods and services to, I

think, it's - immediately we are shooting ourselves in the foot.

Maybe we will lose jobs, but hell, I think the risk is worth it, if it

gives us our rights, our land and prospects back, which is probably

what will happen if we leave. It's a dreadful risk, I think to leave the

EU when there are so many uncertainties. But especially when

the uncertainties seem to point in the direction of our economy being

damaged. No company in Germany, France, Belgium, Holland are going

to pull the rug under companies in England, who are buying goods off

each other. It doesn't, like every other argument, it just doesn't make

sense. Immigration is the other big issue

dominating this campaign. One side tells us we've got to leave to bring

it under control. The other claims that the country can cope and

besides, quitting is too high a price to pay. So let's try and sift

out the facts from the claims and counterclaims. London is sometimes

called the capital of the world, a city where you can even get a

Turkish shave. Watch out say the Leave campaign, many more Turks are

coming. The vote Leave campaign poster couldn't be clearer, Turkey

is joining the EU it says. The implication - totally clear -

millions of Turks are coming here and soon. That, say those who

campaign to limit the numbers coming here, is a prospect well worth

getting in a lather about. The UK has been championing Turkey's

membership for many years. We're now told that the whole process is going

to be re-energised. That is a judgment, not a fact. On the basis

of what has been said and done, Turkey will become a member of the

European Union at some point. There's a problem with this claim,

Turkey is not joining the EU. It might do one day providing, that is,

that Britain and indeed the 27 other members of the EU don't veto it. The

Prime Minister says Turkey won't be joining for decades, but he isn't

promising to veto them. You have to decide if you think Turkey will be

blocked or if one day, like the Poles, they'll join up and their

people will come here in large numbers.

Those who want us to vote Remain insist the NHS can cope even if more

and more people come here from within the EU. They quote the head

of the NHS in England, who recently said that what really mattered was

not the level of immigration, what mattered to him trying to run the

Health Service was how rich the country was. When the NHS was set up

in 1948, we had a population of 50 million in this country. We're at

what, 65 million now, so the NHS has successfully coped with a 15 million

expansion in our population, provided it is properly resourced

from the proceeds of economic growth it can do that. Hold on, our

population is growing at a much faster rate than for decades. The

official forecasts suggest there'll be another four million of us in

just ten years' time. The Health Service cannot cope in the future,

you know why? Because it can't cope now. That's what we're hearing all

the time. The Health Service is under huge pressure, requires more

resources. Just imagine how much more by way of resources it's going

to require with our population increasing at the rate that it is.

Of course, immigrants aren't just people who use the NHS. They help

pay for it out of their taxes and they work in it too. Here's a fact:

One in every 11 hospital doctors came from the EU, so do one in 17

nurses and care workers. It's true that in theory the NHS can cope with

a big influx of people, provided it gets more staff and more money, of

course. But equally, that doesn't mean that immigration doesn't put a

strain on the Health Service and a particular strain in areas where

there's a rapid inflow of people. Go for a coffee in many cities, it

is a fair bet you will be served by an immigrant. This cafe is run by

French people, amongst the 2 million EU citizens currently working in

Britain. Both sides in this referendum insist that they are

committed to cutting immigration, to get net migration down below the

Government target of 100,000 per year. Though the leave campaign

claim this will be much easier to achieve if we are outside the EU.

The fact is that even if we leave the EU, even if we could switch off

immigration from there just like that, the Government would be

nowhere near meeting its net migration target. Why? Because the

latest figures show there are even more people coming here from outside

Europe than inside Europe. Indeed, just on their own, they are almost

double that target. Most big British employers say they rely on

immigrants. If they couldn't get them from Europe, they would want to

get them from other parts of the world. There are not enough British

workers to fulfil the needs of business and business needs global

skills and experience, and they need migrants to help them grow their

companies. In simple terms, are you saying that if we don't employ the

Romanians or Spaniards, we will still end up needing someone to man

the care homes and hospitals and drives the bosses? Yes. Both sides

in this referendum are telling you what they think you want to hear,

that they can get migration down to that government target figure, but

neither are spelling out how they do it, given that businesses insist

they do need immigrants, whether from Europe or outside, to do the

sort of job British people don't want to do or are not qualified to

do. It is a fact that leaving the EU would get migration under control

easier, but there is a judgment that you have to make as to whether

politicians would actually do it, and if they did whether the country

would pay a price. Let's see what voters think about immigration now.

I believe the NHS can't cope. I work as a nurse, I see it all the time,

and I work with many Europeans from Spain, Spanish nurses, Italians and

Romanians, and they are brilliant. I work for the NHS and I know it

cannot cope, I know first-hand. I don't need a video, I don't need a

research, I know first-hand. It is just too much on the NHS. I think it

is incredibly powerful that each European member state has a veto,

and this applies to Turkey joining. OK, at a late stage in the process

it might cause diplomatic ripples but we have that safeguard. We would

be able to control immigration a lot easier if we leave the EU. If you

join the EU, you have to agree to the free movement of people. By

leaving, it is obvious, isn't it? I don't see immigration being a

problem. I don't think the EU and the way they are suggesting we deal

with immigration is impacting on us as a country. The last part of this

video has now shown that by leaving, we will have... There will be a

negative impact on our economy, but there will also be a negative impact

on our social structure as well. That is where I was weighing up in

that video, the sort of different dimensions, the different angles to

that argument. Perhaps if we do leave, those benefit that I were

thinking may be there may not be there. We need migrant workers to

fill the skills gap because British people might not have the skills to

do those jobs. The last time I checked there was a huge amount of

unemployed people. Try telling that to the unemployed people in the

north-east and they will tell you that is a joke.

Let's turn now to sovereignty, who really runs Britain. Does being in

the EU club mean our lives are run by, our laws are made in Brussels?

You have heard the claims and counterclaims, time now for some

facts. Those who want us to leave the EU,

say there is a not so hidden agenda to create a United States of Europe,

a kind of country with its own flag and passport, its own currency, with

plans for common tax spending policies, and one day, who knows, a

European army as well. And that has got some of our former military top

brass demanding we put our foot down. For me, sovereignty is about

being directly accountable to the will of the people in this nation,

and I think we will have more democracy, more sovereignty by not

allowing ourselves to be pulled further into the European system.

But you don't simply get it back by leaving the EU. I don't think you

ever become completely sovereign, it is not about pulling up drawbridges

and pretending we have full control. We will never have full control. It

is true plans are being drawn up for the EU to have greater power over

tax and spending to try to prevent another eurozone crisis, and to deal

with the migration crisis, but Britain might not have to be part of

any of them. We are of course not part of the single currency, we are

also not part of the Schengen borderless area, and we have a

national veto over any decisions about foreign and defence policy. So

you have to decide whether we can get off pretty much whenever we

want, wherever the EU is going. What really bugs some people about

the EU is the idea Brussels bureaucrats can tell us what to do.

It is regulated EU man waking from his regulated slumber... This film

jokes about how many rules we face from the minute we wake up. There

are 1246 laws relating to bread but just 52 covering the crazy anarchic

toaster. 625 laws covering coffee, they say, and 210 covering spoons.

What's more, apparently more than 12,000 covering milk. Those who want

us to leave the EU, claim more than half of our laws come from Brussels.

The truth depends on what you call a law. Do you include every rule and

regulation? If not, experts say the number is a lot lower, it could be

around one in eight. The numbers aren't helping a lot though, are

they? The man who used to be Britain's top civil servant says how

much power Brussels has depends on which laws you are talking about. In

some areas, for example making sure goods can be sold across all

countries, yes we need a level playing field and in those areas

laws to do that become virtually entirely from the European Union. In

other areas like crying, defence, education, virtually nothing comes

from Europe. But is it right we have to have hundreds of regulations

about milk? I think we would all agree we like to ensure the milk we

drink is safe, therefore we need a certain number of regulations on

that. There is safety, environmental concerns, and it is important in an

area where everyone is competing in this world that we are all operating

by the same set of rules. What businesses may see as irritating red

tape, others may see as vital protection of health and safety or

even workers' right. If we did leave, we wouldn't be able to leave

EU laws completely behind. Companies that wanted to trade with our EU

neighbours would still have to comply with all of the rules that

Brussels comes up with, though crucially those that didn't would no

longer have too. You have to decide whether it is the rule is that

really annoy you or the fact that you cannot vote out some of the

people who make them. That is what matters, say levers,

who makes and enforces our laws. People here or people somewhere

else. That is the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, but people who

want to leave the EU say the problem it is not really supreme, it can be

told what to do by the European Court in Luxembourg. Parliament can

be told what to do, we can be told what to do, and not just about the

sort of rules that govern toasters or the trade in bananas, but about

really important things like our own national security. Remember Abu

Hamza who was convicted of terrorism? His Moroccan

daughter-in-law was jailed here for trying to smuggle a SIM card to him

in prison. When Britain tried to deport her, the European Court of

Justice became involved. The Leave campaign complained the court could

but in deporting her because she has a son who was a British citizen.

That's true, but it is also true that in this case the British courts

get the final say. She can be deported if they decide she is a

threat to national security. So here is where you have to make a

judgment. If you hate the idea of the European Court having any say on

this at all, you might think you have got to vote to leave, but if

you think all sorts of courts make all sorts of judgments, some you

like and some you hate, you might think you can afford to remain.

With those sovereignty claims checked for reality, what do our

voters think now? I would be concerned if we were going to be

dragged along the road of deeper and deeper integration, and it was

really interesting to see in the film that we do in fact have a veto.

My vote stands for being in Britain, the United Kingdom as an independent

country, making its own laws and ruling its own people in the way

that we want. Not what foreign powers want. Red tape made in

Britain, at least we are running our own affairs. It is a -- are fair. We

can sort things out here in Britain. People just have an aversion to

regulation in general. What is wrong with rules? We live by them every

day of our lives, and for me that is a sign of a progressive society, to

be able to say this is the way we want to live. These are the rules we

have to follow for the good of everyone. I wasn't aware we can

ultimately overrule European law, if it is a national terror threat, but

aside from that, I think that our own legal system is quite capable of

observing laws that it thinks make sense from other countries. Britain

does have a say on what happens in the country, and if they want to

deport somebody, they can. It might cause who are somewhere, but if they

want to deport somebody, they are able to do it if they have the right

reasons to do it. I still believe the endgame of the European Union,

France and Germany really, is a superstate. I don't see it as a

United States of Europe with one flag-waving and everybody singing a

European Union on them, I believe it is more a collective of our

countries, not one massive state. Voters are crying out for fact in

this referendum, and perhaps the biggest of all is this. No

politician, no expert, no commentator can predict the future

in or out of the EU with any certainty sale in the end it comes

down to your judgment, perhaps how you feel. One thing is clear though,

this is one of the biggest political decisions anyone will take in our

lifetimes. I feel we would be better in charge of our own destiny. If we

leave now it is potentially disastrous. I want British laws and

I will bloody well stay like it. I feel proud and hopefully thankful

once the result comes in that we have remained in the EU. I feel like

this is an important decision for me to make because it will affect a lot

of my choices in the future and now. I think it is important we utilise

our vote to make our future better really. That is what my vote is

about.