Osborne’s Brexit cash myth exposed by MPs

Treasury panel savages In AND Out camps over misleading stats

GEORGE Osborne’s claim that Brexit would leave families £4,300 a year worse off was savaged by MPs yesterday.

They said the Chancellor’s controversial figure was ‘likely to be misconstrued’ and has ‘probably confused’ Britons.

Members of the Treasury select committee also criticised claims by the Remain campaign that 3million jobs were dependent on continued EU membership as ‘misleading’.

The committee, which contains both proand anti-Brexit members, said both sides of the EU debate were guilty of a ‘mountain of exaggeration and unqualified assertion’.

Vote Leave’s ‘core’ claim that leaving the EU would give the country a £350million a week windfall was ‘simply untrue’, they said.

In April, the Chancellor published a Treasury study claiming that ‘families would be £4,300 worse off’ if the UK exited Europe. But the committee concluded that it wrongly suggested that disposable income would fall by that amount. Instead, the figure was simply the projected loss to GDP divided by the number of households.

‘Presenting the figures on the impact of Brexit on a per household basis... is likely to be misconstrued by readers... and probably has confused them,’ their report said.

‘It may have left many readers thinking that the figures refer to the effect of leaving the EU on household disposable income, which they do not.’ MPs said Treasury analysis concluded that the average impact on disposable income would be considerably smaller than Mr Osborne’s figure.

‘To persist with this claim would be to misrepresent the Treasury’s own work,’ they said.

The committee also said the Remain camp’s claim that 3million jobs are dependent on continued EU membership was misleading, leading to the public ‘forming the mistaken impression that all these jobs would be lost’.

The Brexit campaign has been widely criticised for a message on battle bus vehicles touring the country that reads: ‘We send the EU £350million a week – let’s fund our NHS instead.’ The Treasury committee said it was ‘simply untrue’ and ‘by far the most serious’ offence in the EU battle. MPs said the claim we would get back £350million failed to take account of the British rebate – worth £85million a week.

‘It is very unfortunate that they have chosen to place this figure at the heart of their campaign,’ said the MPs’ report. ‘ This has been done in the face of overwhelming evidence, including that of the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, demonstrating that it is misleading.’

The verdict was agreed unanimously by the committee, which includes MP Steve Baker – a member of the Vote Leave group.

The report added: ‘ The public debate is being poorly served by inconsistent, unqualified and – in some cases – misleading claims and counter-claims. Members of both the Leave and Remain camps are making such claims.’ The MPs said it was ‘plausible’ that, in the short term, Brexit would ‘weaken the pound, reduce investment and increase borrowing costs’. But they also concluded that it could create opportunities to ‘strike new trade and better trade deals with countries outside the EU’.

Pro-Brexit Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg last night said the report showed that the In campaign used ‘misleading figures’. ‘Most shockingly the Chancellor has consistently used a figure that he ought to have known would have been misunderstood and has misrepresented the Treasury’s own analysis to do so.’

‘Overwhelming evidence’