Reality Check: The EU referendum

Summary

BBC Reality Check gets to the facts behind the claims in the EU referendum campaign and beyond
The referendum took place on 23 June 2016 - the UK voted to leave the EU
On this page you will find all the checks the team has done so far

Live Reporting

Do EU migrants take jobs from UK-born workers?published at 17:39 British Summer Time 10 May 2016
Reality Check
The claim: The number of migrant workers coming to the UK makes it more difficult for UK-born workers to find jobs - for every 100 migrants who get a job, 23 UK-born workers are displaced.
Reality Check verdict: This figure does not show the impact of EU migrants. It refers to non-EU migrants and there are further important caveats - those who stay for more than five years do not displace British-born workers, the impact is significant in times of economic downturn only, and it is not considered permanent.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Does EU migration put pressure on schools?published at 17:34 British Summer Time 10 May 2016
Reality Check
The claim: Immigration is increasing pressure on schools to the extent that the UK needs to find school places equivalent to 27 new secondary schools or 100 new primary schools.
Reality Check verdict: The recent increase in immigration has put additional pressure on school places - cumulatively by even more than this: these figures refer to the impact in just one year. Although it sounds like a big number it is equivalent to less than one pupil for each school in the UK.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Do 100,000 North East jobs depend on EU?published at 15:22 British Summer Time 9 May 2016
Reality Check
The claim: 100,000 jobs in north-east England are dependent on EU membership.
Reality Check verdict: The research does not suggest all these jobs are dependent on EU membership, so there is no reason to think they would all disappear if the UK left.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Do 44% of UK exports go to the EU?published at 16:55 British Summer Time 6 May 2016
Reality Check
The claim: EU countries buy 44% of everything we sell abroad.
Reality Check verdict: The 44% figure is a bit of an overstatement, but not by more than about two percentage points.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Is £250bn of trade at risk from Brexit?published at 15:53 British Summer Time 4 May 2016
Reality Check
The claim: Leaving the EU would put £250bn of trade at risk, according to Britain Stronger in Europe.
Reality Check: The group has taken a set of figures predicting the benefits of EU membership and used that to reach a figure for the risks of leaving. It would not necessarily work like that. Also, the figures include imports, a fall in which would not necessarily be a bad thing.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Do we export five times as much to EU as to Commonwealth?published at 16:04 British Summer Time 29 April 2016
Reality Check
The claim: The UK exports five times as much to the EU as it does to the Commonwealth.
Reality Check verdict: Yes we do. The UK's export of goods and services to the Commonwealth in 2014 were worth £47.8bn. The comparable figure for the EU was £228.9bn. It's worth noting that the UK does plenty of business with countries that are part of neither group - for example, we sell twice as much to the USA as we do to our biggest EU partner, Germany.
Read the full Reality Check here.
How many refugees in Germany will become EU citizens?published at 13:06 British Summer Time 29 April 2016
Reality Check
The Claim: Owen Paterson made a speech this week saying that many of the refugees who have arrived in Germany will be able to get German passports and then travel freely around the EU, including to the UK.
Reality Check verdict: We don't know yet how many refugees in Germany will successfully claim asylum let alone become German citizens, but it is true that anyone who holds a German passport can travel freely throughout the EU.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Do we have a say over EU small business regulations?published at 17:41 British Summer Time 28 April 2016
Reality Check
The claim: Priti Patel says the UK has no say over the amount of regulation coming from the EU. She also says the UK is constantly being outvoted.
Reality Check verdict: The UK does have a say over regulations affecting small businesses, both through its MEPs and government ministers who vote at the Council, where they have been on the "winning side" 86.7% of the time in recent years.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Would Brexit be good for the UK economy?published at 17:25 British Summer Time 28 April 2016
Reality Check
The claim: Leaving the EU would make the UK economy grow more than staying in.
Reality Check verdict: This is not a mainstream view - but they are reputable economists. It is an optimistic vision of how the UK economy might fare outside the EU, although some of its assumptions are questionable.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Will the UK pay £1.8bn to Albania and Turkey?published at 22:04 British Summer Time 27 April 2016
Reality Check
The Claim: Vote Leave says the UK will be obliged to pay £1.8bn by 2020 to encourage Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey to join the EU.
Reality check verdict: Over a seven year period, £1.2bn of the UK's contributions to the EU Budget will go to seven candidate states. The UK committed another £250m towards helping Turkey support Syrian refugees for two years and might commit more in the future.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Could the UK stay in the EU but leave the European Convention on Human Rights?published at 13:41 British Summer Time 27 April 2016
Reality Check
The Claim: "If we want to reform human rights laws in this country, it isn't the EU we should leave but the ECHR and the jurisdiction of its court."
Reality Check verdict: If the UK wanted to stay in the EU but leave the ECHR, the European Commission would have to decide whether that meant the UK had too little respect for human rights to stay in the Union. Nobody has tried it before and lawyers disagree about what the Commission's conclusion would be.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Would Brexit lead to a rise in wages?published at 18:07 British Summer Time 26 April 2016
Reality Check
The Claim: Leaving the European Union would lead to an increase in wages, especially for low-skilled or semi-skilled workers.
Reality Check verdict: It is possible that curbs on immigration would increase wages a little, but that effect is likely to be dwarfed by what happens to the economy as a whole.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Does EU membership make it harder to control immigration?published at 15:40 British Summer Time 25 April 2016
Reality Check
The claim: Home Secretary Theresa May says: "Free movement makes it harder to control immigration, but it doesn't make it impossible to control immigration."
Reality Check verdict: Free movement does make it harder to control immigration. Leaving the EU would not necessarily mean abandoning free movement and the government has not managed to meet its immigration ambitions even for non-EU migrants, over whom it has greater control.
Read the full Reality Check here.
How many EU nationals have been refused entry to the UK?published at 16:45 British Summer Time 22 April 2016
By Shelley Phelps
Reality Check
The claim: The home secretary has stopped lots of European Union nationals from visiting the UK.
Reality Check verdict: The UK refuses a tiny fraction of EU nationals who want to come here. It has to have very good grounds to do so. In the case of criminality, for example, a conviction even for a serious crime in not good enough - the individual must pose a current risk.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Are we giving £350m a week to Brussels?published at 14:54 British Summer Time 22 April 2016
By Anthony Reuben
Reality Check
The claim: "We are giving £20bn a year or £350m a week to Brussels."
Reality Check verdict: We are not giving £20bn a year or £350m a week to Brussels - Britain pays £276m a week to the EU budget because of the rebate.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Has the UK given up its veto on tax and banking?published at 11:04 British Summer Time 21 April 2016
By Tamara Kovacevic
Reality Check
The claim: Speaking on the Today Programme, Michael Gove said: “The EU is clear: it wants more power over our taxes and our banks. Sadly, we’ve surrendered our veto on these moves.”
Reality Check verdict: Britain still has a veto over tax measures, but can be out-voted by other EU members on some issues that affect UK banks and financial institutions.
Read the full Reality Check here.
How vulnerable is the UK’s rebate?published at 18:10
By Tamara Kovacevic
Reality Check
The claim: “Our rebate is not a permanent and unalterable feature of our membership anchored in the treaties. It’s a negotiated settlement… which could be eroded.”
Reality Check verdict: He's right - the rebate is not a permanent feature of EU membership, but the UK has a veto over the process that would scrap or reduce it.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Free trade, free from regulation?published at 17:53 British Summer Time 19 April 2016
By Edward Curwen
Reality Check
The claim: Michael Gove said that if Britain left the European Union: “We would be part of a free trade zone that extends from Iceland to the Russian border…we would have full access to the European market but we would be free from EU regulation.”
Reality Check verdict: Full access with no regulation may be Mr Gove’s hope but it looks impossible to deliver in practice.
Read the full Reality Check here.
A £36 billion black hole?published at 21:06 British Summer Time 18 April 2016
By Shelley Phelps and Peter Barnes
Reality Check
The claim: “Our tax receipts would face an annual £36 billion black hole ... equivalent to 8p on the basic rate of income tax.”
Reality Check verdict: The £36bn lower tax receipts figure, like the rest of the Treasury document, is based on what looks like a reasonable modelling exercise but it’s impossible to be certain about how the economy will develop in the future.
Read the full Reality Check here.
Does EU membership attract £1 trillion to the UK?published at 20:22 British Summer Time 18 April 2016
By Edward Curwen
Reality Check
The claim: “We have received over £1 trillion of overseas investment into Britain, much of it driven by the fact we are in the EU and its Single Market.”
Reality Check verdict: Over £1 trillion of foreign investment has been made in the UK. Its place in the Single Market is certainly a factor, but hard to definitively quantify.
Read the full Reality Check here.