Reality Check

We get lots of comments on the @BBCRealityCheck, external feed about the BBC being funded by the European Union, so here are the facts.

BBC public service news programmes are not allowed to take any external funding, including from the EU.

World Service is also now funded by the licence fee, although the UK government has agreed to pay for some new services.

There are three areas that do not influence BBC editorial policy that benefit from EU money

BBC Media Action

BBC Media Action is independent from the BBC - it is an international development charity set up by the BBC. In 2014-15 it received 5% of its funding from the EU, which was £2.3m. Its biggest donor was the UK's Department for International Development. 

Research and Development

The BBC applies for grants to help fund its research into broadcasting technology that has contributed to developments such as Freeview and DAB digital radio. Last year it received a grant of €607,953 (£472,197)., external

Independent Production Companies

Some production companies (not in-house ones) apply for grants that may be part-funded by the EU, which provide incentives to make programmes in particular regions of the UK. This is particularly the case for drama productions - news, current affairs and factual programmes do not use such incentives. In 2014-15, less than 2% of independently-produced programmes on the BBC used such incentives, which accounted for an average of 6% of their programme budgets.

Reality Check

Image source, Reuters

Let's run through a few of the statement's in Boris Johnson's speech this morning.

• Only 4% of officials in the EU Commission are British.

He's right - of a total of 32,966 staff currently working for the Commission, 1,164 or 3.5% are UK nationals

• Youth unemployment is running at 22% on average in the eurozone

Yes that's right - the most recent figures from Eurostat suggest that youth unemployment in the countries that use the euro was 22.0%. It was 19.7% in the wider EU.

• Claims we've checked before

Children under the age of eight are not banned from blowing up balloons in the EU. 

The EU does limit the power of vacuum cleaners as part of plans to promote energy efficiency.

The EU limits the length of lorries, but is now in the process of slowly amending the regulations to improve safety.

Reality Check

On the Today Programme this morning, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said: "We hand over something like £380m a week to the European Union. Most of that goes to projects in other countries."

At the weekend, Ukip MP Douglas Carswell said it was £350m a week.

The Treasury gives, external a figure of £18.777bn for the UK's gross contribution in 2014, the most recent year published, which is £361m a week.

But remember that's the gross figure, which is not handed over to the EU - we deduct the rebate first, so in this case we'd hand over £276m a week. 

Is most of that spent on projects in other countries? Well, £88m a week is paid back to the UK in the form of payments to support things like agriculture and regional development, leaving a net payment of £188m a week. 

Out of that, £26m a week goes directly to private sector organisations in the UK such as universities to fund research, leaving £162m a week going to run EU institutions and projects in other countries, which is not most of the money.

Mr Duncan Smith continued: "Now, £300m a week [sic] we will bring back to the UK - that's the equivalent of building a hospital a week."

How much does it cost to build a hospital? Well obviously it depends how big a hospital it is.

But looking at some recent examples, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham cost £545m, the Royal Liverpool was £430m, while Midland Metropolitan Hospital in Smethwick will cost £340m to build (although there are private finance costs on top of that over 30 years).

Reality Check

Prime Minister David Cameron has been at the Vauxhall plant at Ellesmere Port talking about the impact the European Union has on UK jobs.

So it was no surprise to hear him repeat the old three million jobs claim.

We've heard Liberal Democrats in the coalition government and members of the previous Labour government say that three million UK jobs are linked to EU membership.

But Mr Cameron went a step further, saying they were "dependent" on EU trade, which is pushing it.

Is he suggesting that all those jobs would cease to exist if we were to stop trading with the EU (although nobody is suggesting that would happen if we left the EU)?

Also, as we have mentioned before, the methodology is a bit suspect. The Treasury worked out what proportion of the country's total economic output is made up of exports to the EU. Then it calculated that proportion of the UK labour force. And that's the answer!  

Reality Check

Image source, Getty Images

According to the London Mayor Boris Johnson: "You cannot express the sovereignty of Parliament and accept the 1972 European Communities Act. There’s no way of doing both at the same time."

He bases that on his interpretation of the view of government lawyers. So, did the UK lose parliamentary sovereignty – the constitutional principle that makes Parliament the supreme legal authority in the UK – when it enacted the European Communities Act in 1972?  

Answer: No.  

The 1972 Act gave direct effect to EU law and meant that if there was a conflict between an act of the British Parliament and EU law, Parliament lost out and EU law prevailed. That meant Parliament was giving up part of its sovereignty. But it remains sovereign because it can repeal the 1972 Act, just as it can repeal any other act it has passed.  

Read more from Clive with doggy metaphors.

Reality Check

We don’t know yet.

The UK is already committed to paying £250m over the next two years, as part of the EU-Turkey deal signed in November 2015, under which the EU is giving Turkey €3bn in exchange for Turkey reducing the number of refugees crossing into the EU via Greece.

Of that €3bn, €1bn will be financed from the EU budget and the rest by contributions from the member states according to the size of their economies. Germany, which has the biggest economy, will pay the largest amount, €428m, followed by the UK’s €328m (£250m). 

Italy and Cyprus initially objected to the deal, which was eventually approved in late January 2016, paving the way for the first payment to Turkey on 4 March 2016.

At the EU-Turkey summit on 7 March 2016, Turkey asked for an additional €3bn over the next two years. The EU leaders did not agree to that, but promised to speed up the disbursement of the November deal as well as “decide on additional funding for the Refugee Facility for Syrians”. At the end of the summit, Angela Merkel said: “A further €3 billion will be needed at the request of Turkey. We said in principle that this was a welcome approach.”

So, additional EU funding for Syrian refugees in Turkey is on the cards. But until the leaders decide on the amount and on where the money will come from, we cannot know what the UK contribution will be. The EU leaders are expected to discuss this when they meet in Brussels for a summit on 17 and 18 March.

Reality Check

If you were listening to Prime Minister's Questions today, you would have heard Labour MP Julie Elliot asking: "Does the prime minister agree with me that it's very important that we make the positive case for remaining in the EU - that each of us gets £1,200 back for every £120 we put in?"

Is it true?

Well, the £1,200 is about what you get if you divide the CBI's figure, external of £3,000 per household per year by 2.4, which is the size of the average household, external. 

There has been a fair amount of criticism of the CBI figure. It was based on five research papers, which were among those that found the greatest benefits to EU membership. 

A report from the House of Commons Library, external warned that such calculations were based on making hefty assumptions and as such the conclusions "can appear influenced by the prior convictions of those conducting the analysis".

As for the £120 cost, that also comes from the CBI report. It's taken the figure for the UK's net contribution (that's subtracting the rebate and the value of direct payments made back to the UK to support things like agriculture and rural development) and divided that by the population. 

But it is based on the figures for 2011. If you do the same calculation with 2014 figures you get to £154.

UPDATE: The CBI has returned to its research, external since the 2013 publication I linked to above. It still concludes the figure is £3,000. 

Reality Check

Image source, EPA

Energy minister Andrea Leadsom is one of several leading politicians involved in today’s launch of the Women for Britain group which is campaigning for a Leave vote in the EU referendum. This morning she said that women weren’t as engaged with the debate as men.

Polls suggest she’s right, although the difference is not massive. For example, in their most recent poll about the most important issues facing the country, Ipsos MORI found that 20% of people mentioned Europe or the European Union: the highest figure since 2003. Looking at the gender breakdown the figures were 24% for men and 17% for women. (Source: Ipsos MORI, 5-23 February. Sample size: 1,009)

Polls also suggest that more women than men are yet to make up their minds about how to vote. Since the beginning of February, taking an average of poll results, 21% of women – more than one in five – said they didn’t know how they’d vote In the referendum compared with 13% of men. (Sources: BMG, ComRes, ICM, Ipsos MORI, TNS, YouGov)

The Women IN campaign group has also been busy today. They’ve launched a video along with a warning that women’s rights which are protected by EU law would be at risk if the UK voted to Leave.

It should be remembered, though, that UK laws that have been enacted to fulfil EU directives would still be on the statute book after a Brexit. It would be up to future governments to decide if they wanted to repeal any of that legislation.

Also, some legislation in this area, such as the right to shared parental leave introduced by the coalition government, is unconnected to EU law.

Reality Check

On the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Boris Johnson gave this example involving Crossrail, of how the EU has made his job as Mayor of London more difficult.

Image source, Getty Images

But Transport for London has told BBC News that this is not true. 

Its spokesperson contradicted the Mayor, who is the chairman of the organisation, by saying:

So TfL says the Mayor’s office didn’t have anything to do with it. The Department for Transport, far from seeking to impose this, asked for an opt out, which they received without difficulty. 

And the process didn’t affect the Crossrail tunnels at all because by the time the directive came into place the tunnels had almost been completed anyway.

Reality Check

Bank of England governor Mark Carney has been cross-examined by the Commons Treasury Select Committee this morning.

Jacob Rees-Mogg MP objected to some of his assertions: "Particularly this argument that EU membership reinforces the dynamism of the United Kingdom economy, when the growth rate of the economy is actually faster from 1948 to 1973 that it is from 1973 to 2012."

He's right - the UK economy grew at an average rate of more than 3% between 1948 and 1973 and only just over 2% from 1973 to 2012.

But Mr Carney was keen to add some context. "All major, advanced economies experienced more rapid post-World War Two growth than subsequent growth post the oil shock of 72-73."

"In terms of the relative performance of the UK economy you see two accelerations, first upon accession to the European Community and then in the early to mid '90s upon the formation of the single market."

He refers this conclusion to the work of economic historians such as Nick Crafts at Warwick University.

So the UK economy has been growing more slowly since 1973 than it did between 1948 and 1973, but it was boosted in the '70s and '90s compared with its peers.

Reality Check

There was a great row on Sunday Politics yesterday between UKIP MP Douglas Carswell and presenter Andrew Neil about which figures we should use for the UK contribution to the EU Budget.

It seems like a good opportunity to explain some of the figures you may have heard.

Mr Carswell was using the top, blue line on the graph below, which is the gross contribution - the total amount we owe before any deductions.

He divided that, to get to a figure of about £350m a week.

Andrew Neil argued that if you were looking for a figure for how much we send every week to Brussels, you would have to subtract the rebate (the red line) because that is deducted before the money is sent to the EU.

Mr Carswell said that the rebate could be removed at any time so should not be included in these figures.

Another figure that is often quoted is the net contribution, which is what you get if you also deduct the payments made back to the UK to fund things like agriculture and regional development, which gives you the green line.

The net figure is just under £10bn a year, which is £190m a week.

Reality Check

There was a bit of a howler on the Daily Politics today, when Stephen Bush from the New Statesman said: "The Common Agricultural Policy puts £200bn into the agriculture sector over the course of the next parliament."

After a hard stare from presenter Andrew Neil, he corrected himself to £20bn, a figure he had given earlier.

Is his corrected figure right? If you look at table 3f on page 18 of this government publication, external, you will see figures for EAGF and EAFRD (that's money paid directly to farmers and money received for rural development), which over the five years of the parliament are forecast to add up to £15.9bn.

Reality Check
Tamara Kovacevic

Image source, PA

Further to my earlier post, we’ve been trying to find out how effective the Le Touquet agreement has been at stopping the flow of irregular migrants to the UK.

There aren’t any figures available for the number of people refused entry to the UK at the Calais border point.

But the UK Government does publish the total number of those who are stopped at all immigration checks on the continental side of the Channel.

That includes the operation in Calais – and similar checkpoints in Dunkirk, at several French train stations, and in Belgium, at Brussels Gare du Midi train station.

Between 2005 – when the agreement came into force – and 2015, a total of 55,494 people were refused entry to the UK at those points, according to government statistics (Source: UK Government Immigration Statistics Release, updated on 3 March 2016).

It’s reasonable to assume that most of those people would have been stopped in France, but we can’t be sure as the statistics do not go to that level of detail.

Reality Check

Image source, HM Government

An interesting point from Jon Moynihan who is on the board of Vote Leave and has been speaking at the British Chambers of Commerce conference today.

He says we need to stop referring to the EU as the world's biggest tariff-free trading area, because it is only that if you include the UK.

If the UK were to leave the EU, he says, then the economy of the US would be bigger than the EU.

There is agreement on the figures behind this point, with the graphic above appearing in yesterday's paper from the government on the alternatives to EU membership.

Reality Check

Image source, AFP

French finance minister Emmanuel Macron told the FT today that, if the UK left the EU, “migrants will no longer be in Calais”.

Would Brexit mean that France would open its border with the UK and let thousands of migrants currently in Calais cross the Channel?

France and the UK are bound by the Le Touquet agreement, a deal they signed in 2003, which established the UK immigration checks on French territory. Le Touquet is not an EU agreement and, if the UK votes to leave the EU, the deal will not automatically be affected.

Under the agreement, passengers are checked before they embark on cross-Channel services. The checks have stopped irregular migrants from reaching the UK, but they have also led, in part, to the establishment of the “Jungle”, the migrant camp in Calais that French authorities are currently trying to dismantle.

The agreement can be terminated only by the UK or the French government, after giving six months notice.

Reality Check

It was suggested to a BMW board member on Radio 4's Today Programme that BMW would be trying to persuade the German government to do a free trade deal with the UK if it left the union, because it imports more BMWs to the UK than it exports from the UK.

BMW has confirmed the figures this morning. The company imported 157,000 cars (of all its badges) from the rest of the EU to the UK last year, and exported around 100,000 cars from the UK to the rest of the EU.

Of course, it's not just about what happens to whole cars. BMW also exported about 140,000 engines from the UK to the rest of the EU.

On a broader point, the chart from the ONS, external above confirms that the UK has been importing a considerably higher value of cars from the EU than it has been exporting. 

And overall, in 2015 the UK exported 1,277,881 cars according to the industry body the SMMT, external, of which 57.5% went to other EU countries.

Reality Check

Image source, HM Government

The government paper on the options for the UK if it were to leave the EU contained this chart, laying out the levels of tariffs imposed by the EU on most-favoured nations (that's pretty much everyone who is in the World Trade Organisation but not the EU). It ranges from 0% for cotton to 42.1% for sugar. 

No figures were put on how much those extra tariffs would put on the price of products being imported into the UK, but this report, external from December 2015 from Stronger In Europe claimed that the UK would have to match the tariffs placed on UK products by the EU, which would raise the price of EU imports by £11bn.

It said that the UK would have to impose such tariffs or the EU would have no incentive to reach a trade deal.

Leave campaigners argue that any extra costs would be cancelled out by savings from not having to contribute to the EU budget.

Reality Check

Image source, HM Government

The government has now published its paper on alternatives to EU membership, external.

It is set out in much the same way as the earlier Reality Check on the subject. It divides the options up into three possibilities: the Norway model, negotiated bilateral agreements (such as Switzerland) and the World Trade Organisation option.

It expresses particular concern about the capacity of bilateral agreements to give the UK's dominant service sector access to European markets.

The section on bilateral agreements looks at the examples of Switzerland, Turkey and Canada, concluding that none would be suitable for the UK and also casting doubt on whether other EU countries would be prepared to extend a deal such as Switzerland's to the UK, quoting the Council of the EU describing it in 2010 as "complex and unwieldy".

Unsurprisingly, the government paper concludes that none of the available options would be as favourable as staying in the EU.

Reality Check

Image source, AFP

The government is going to lay out some of the other options for the UK if it were to leave the EU. Leave campaigners say the UK would negotiate its own agreement and not follow any of these models.

1) Norway

Norway is a member of the European Economic Area, has access to the single market and follows EU legislation in areas such as the free movement of goods, services, people and money. 

It is not bound by EU laws governing things like agriculture and fisheries or monetary union, but it does have to make a financial contribution to the EU budget.

It does not get to vote on EU policies.

2) Switzerland

Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association.

Its access to the single market is governed by a series of agreements, which cover some but not all areas of trade.

It makes a financial contribution to the EU, which is smaller than Norway’s.

Switzerland does not have a general duty to apply EU laws but it does have to accept free movement and implement some EU regulations to enable trade.

But there may be trouble ahead with Switzerland's relationship with the EU, after a 2014 referendum supported placing limits on immigration.

3) World Trade Organisation

The WTO sets out rules for international trade that apply to all members, so this is what the UK would have, after a period of transition, if no agreements were made following an EU exit.

It would mean that the UK would not have to accept free movement or contribute to the EU budget, but goods exported to EU countries would still have to meet EU standards.

There would be some tariffs in place on trade with the EU and trade in services would be restricted.

Andrew Walker
World Service economics correspondent

The European Union’s negotiated some good trading deals that the UK benefits from as a member of the EU. If the UK were to leave, could it take those deals with them?

Lord Lawson, the former chancellor and chair of Vote Leave, thinks so: he says the deals were made on behalf of member states, so member states can benefit from them whether or not they are part of the EU.

Peter Mandelson, a former EU trade commissioner, takes a different view. He says that during the negotiating process the EU acts on behalf of member states, but once they are finalised they “become EU agreements, they do not become British, Spanish or Italian agreements”.

So who’s right? It depends who you’re dealing with.

For business conducted under World Trade Organisation rules, Lord Lawson is largely right. The UK is a member in its own right, and would continue to be one outside the EU. It would be entitled to the same access to other countries’ markets as other WTO members, although there might have to be a negotiation on the terms of others’ access to the UK.

For agreements with other countries that give the EU improved access – such as the deals between the EU and Korea, or between the EU and Canada – all the experts we consulted said the UK would have to re-negotiate with the countries concerned.

However, just how hard the UK would have to fight to maintain the benefits obtained through the EU-negotiated deals is something we can’t predict.

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