PM’s new scare… The cost of your holiday will rise
DAVID Cameron said yesterday there was a ‘real risk’ that prices would rise and jobs would go if Britain left the EU.
Addressing staff at an assembly plant for military aircraft, the Prime Minister said the cost of holidays could soar because EU membership keeps down the price of fares. He said co-operation on defence matters with France would be in jeopardy if voters chose Brexit – putting defence workers’ jobs in question.
The comments were seized on by Leave campaigners last night as another example of the Prime Minister’s desperate scare tactics to keep the UK under the Brussels yoke.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond also spoke out yesterday to claim the EU would take revenge on Brit-
ain if it voted to leave on June 23 by dragging its feet over a new trade deal. He said goodwill towards Britain from its EU partners would ‘evaporate in an instant’.
The Prime Minister’s comments – on the latest stop of a regional tour to sell his Brussels deal – come just days after Number 10 published a white paper full of ‘lurid’ claims of disaster if Britain left the EU.
Mr Cameron told his audience at the BAE Systems Eurofighter plant in Preston that prices in the shops could go up, as well as the cost of flights. He said: ‘Since we joined the EU, the cost of flights, the cost of holidays, has come right down. That’s something we benefit from.
‘We’ve also got to think about the issue of the prices in our shops. Being part of a single market keeps our prices down. There’s a real risk that, if we leave, we would see fewer jobs, less investment and higher prices.’
The Prime Minister also suggested that, if Britain left the EU, the French may be less interested in working with us on defence.
Asked directly if leaving the EU would threaten jobs at BAE Systems, which employs thousands of workers in the UK, he said: ‘I am saying that we are better off in a reformed European Union.’
Mr Hammond also warned that the pound could fall on the world currency markets if Britain left the EU, raising the cost of imported goods. The Foreign Secretary told MPs: ‘A vote to leave is a vote for an uncertain future, that’s a simple fact, and that uncertainty would generate immediate and negative reactions in financial markets.’
MPs in favour of Brexit, however, have pointed out that a falling pound would be a boost for UK exporters.
Matthew Elliott, of Vote Leave, said: ‘The PM has spent the last week doing nothing but scaremongering. The public don’t want another four months of Project Fear.’
Quentin Letts – Page 20