‘The most important finding in today’s report is the acknowledgement that the UK economy will continue to grow after we vote to leave the EU.

‘But this is a flawed report, that makes assumptions which have been roundly dismissed by senior economists.

‘Instead of listening to partisan advisory bodies, let’s look at what businesses are actually telling us: that the costly red tape and regulations emanating from Brussels are constraining their ability to innovate and create jobs.  If we Vote Leave on 23 June, we can change that.’

• The OECD report wrongly assumes that trade will suffer in the event of a vote to leave. This assumption has been slammed by a former senior International Monetary Fund economist.

• The OECD report released today acknowledges that the UK economy will continue to grow after we Vote Leave.

• The OECD has previously admitted that the only way that the Prime Minister’s promise to cut migration to the tens of thousands is if we Vote Leave.

• The OECD is wrong to claim that the referendum has led to uncertainty.

• The OECD recommended British entry into the euro. This would have been a disaster for the economy and for jobs.

• The OECD said the Exchange Rate Mechanism would benefit Britain. It was a disaster.

• The OECD is not an impartial organisation, having received €30.5 million from the EU between 2007 and 2014.

The OECD report wrongly assumes that trade will suffer in the event of a vote to leave. This assumption has been slammed by a former senior International Monetary Fund economist today.

The report claims ‘there likely would be a marked change in the UK trade regime, raising barriers to market access for many exporters especially in the European Economic Area and in the 53 countries with which the European Union has trade agreements.’

This has been contradicted by Ashoka Mody, a former senior International Monetary Fund economist: ‘All productive trading relationships will remain intact. For this reason too, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble’s threat that renegotiation of Britain’s trade arrangements with the EU would be “most difficult” and “poisonous” is bluster. Germans run a trade surplus with Britain. Mr Schaeuble can humiliate the IMF, but he dare not hurt the interests of his exporters (or his importers). And even if British trade with the EU falls, trade with other regions will undoubtedly increase‘.

The UK is in fact more likely to strike free trade agreements if we Vote Leave. The EU has failed to negotiate a free trade agreement with China. By contrast, both Iceland (which has a population of less than half a million) and Switzerland have negotiated free trade agreements with China.

The UK’s former Ambassador to the EU and leading supporter of BSE (Britain Stronger in Europe), Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, has admitted ‘there is no doubt that the UK could secure a free trade agreement with the EU. That is not an issue’. The pro-EU CBI has said ‘the UK is highly likely to secure a Free Trade Agreement with the EU, and such an agreement would be likely to be negotiated at an extremely high level of ambition relative to other FTAs‘. The pro-EU Centre for European Reform has accepted that ‘given the importance of the UK market to the eurozone, the UK would probably have little difficulty in negotiating an FTA‘.

The OECD report out today acknowledges that the UK economy will continue to grow after we Vote Leave.

The OECD report states that the UK will grow by 1.6% in 2016 and 1.9% in 2017. This is higher than many other EU countries, including France, Belgium, Finland, Italy, and Portugal.

The report also states that ‘By 2030, UK GDP could be over 5% lower than otherwise if exit had not occurred‘.

In a report released last month, the OECD stated that its central forecast is ‘an annual reduction in UK GDP growth of 0.3 percentage points per annum over 2016 to 2030’ (This amounts to 4.5% over the total period).

Since trend growth in the period 1980 to 2014 averaged 2.2% per annum, the OECD forecast that the UK economy would continue to grow on average by at least 1.9% per year until 2030 if we Vote Leave.

The OECD has previously admitted that the only way that the Prime Minister’s promise to cut migration to the tens of thousands is if we Vote Leave.

The OECD has previously stated: ‘Withdrawal from the EU could also provide scope for the imposition of tighter controls on inward migration. This would reinforce the endogenous effects on economic migration coming from a weaker UK economy and labour market. Net inward migration is assumed to decline by 84 000 per year over 2019-2023’ (OECD, April 2016, link).

The OECD previously stated that: ‘After Brexit, immigration is likely to be restricted more significantly‘.  It further acknowledged that, if we Vote Leave, we can control the quality of people coming to the UK: ‘Measures to control immigration, based on the introduction of points systems as in Australia and Canada, help to increase skill levels of new immigrants’.

The OECD has also previously said that the only way to get immigration down to the tens of thousands is to leave the EU: ‘following Brexit, tighter controls in the UK could lead to a reduction of net migration from EU and non-EU countries to below this level‘.

The OBR has said net migration from 2021 onwards will be 185,000 per year. If the OECD is right that net migration would be 84,000 lower by 2023 onwards, this means net migration would be cut to 101,000 per year by 2023 if we Vote Leave: just 2,000 above the level needed to meet the Prime Minister’s promise.

The Prime Minister previously promised to reduce migration from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands. His Director of Strategy at the Britain Stronger in Europe (BSE) campaign said: ‘No policy on immigration is the right policy‘.

The OECD is wrong to claim that the referendum has led to uncertainty.

The report claims that the referendum has led to an ‘increase in risk’, but this assertion is not backed up by the evidence. The OBR has stated that ‘there were only tentative signs of uncertainty regarding the EU referendum result affecting investment intentions by the time we closed this forecast and we have made no adjustment to reflect a change in behaviour’.

The OECD also claims that leaving the EU would have an impact on asset prices, but the Bank of England has had to admit that ‘the evidence on whether other asset prices, including market interest rates and equities, have been affected by the referendum is less clear‘.

The OECD report also states that leaving could raise inflation – but in February 2016, the Bank of England’s inflation report did not see the EU referendum as a major issue in determining inflation, stating: ‘Global growth has fallen back further over the past three months, as emerging economies have generally continued to slow and as the US economy has grown by less than expected. There have also been considerable falls in the prices of risky assets and another significant fall in oil prices’.

The OECD recommended British entry into the euro. This would have been a disaster for the economy and for jobs.

In 1999, the OECD stated: ‘The introduction of the euro delivers a number of benefits. These include reduced transaction costs associated with trade and financial interactions with other euro area countries, no intra euro area exchange rate risk, greater overall price stability and sharpened price transparency. Lower exchange rate risk also implies that interest rate risk premia should be small, and therefore lower borrowing costs in many countries. These benefits will complement the single market in goods and services and are likely to reinforce the long-run efficiencies associated with the single market. The European Commission estimated nine years ago that the direct static benefits of monetary union linked to lower transaction costs could be around 1/2 a per cent of EU GDP, equivalent to around $40 billion a year. Recent studies have estimated larger gains (up to 1 per cent of GDP). EMU is also likely to generate endogenous consequences such as more transparent prices unleashing stronger competitive forces, possibly fewer policy induced shocks compared with the past as a result of the stability-oriented macroeconomic policy framework and it may serve as a catalyst to speed-up structural changes’.

In 2000 it was reported that the OECD wanted the UK to join the euro: ‘Britain told: economy is ripe for euro… The government’s attempt to keep the lid on the debate over joining the euro until after the election was undermined by an independent report from the world’s top economic thinktank which said the British and core European economies were close to converging. In spite of strenuous efforts by the Treasury to delete mention of anything remotely contentious, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s regular healthcheck on the UK economy said that in some respects the UK would soon be more like Euroland than some of the new currency zone’s existing members’.

It was also reported that: ‘Britain is more suitable to join the euro single currency than many of its existing members as the difference in output and GDP growth rates are continually narrowing, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development said today’.

The author of the study, Vincent Koen, said: ‘If Greece is deemed fit to join, it would be strange if the UK wasn’t‘.

The OECD said the Exchange Rate Mechanism would benefit Britain. It was a disaster.

In December 1990, the OECD said: ‘while the benefits are potentially great, ERM participation constitutes an ambitious strategy for the United Kingdom’ (Xinhua General News Service, 20 December 1990).

‘Pointing out the full members of the European Monetary System have an average inflation rate of slightly more than 4%, compared to 8.3% in Britain, OECD economists make clear their support for a quick decision by the British government on joining the exchange-rate mechanism of the system’ (The Financial Post, 30 June 1989, p. 7).

In October 1990, the UK joined the ERM. The ERM caused interest rates to rise to 15%, led to millions of households going into negative equity and unemployment reaching 2.9 million in 1993. The resulting ‘Black Wednesday’ debacle that resulted from Britain’s membership of the ERM cost the UK economy £3.3bn, according to HM Treasury analysis. The UK economy recovered rapidly after leaving the ERM.

The OECD is not an impartial organisation, having received €30.5 million from the EU between 2007 and 2014.

According to the European Commission, the OECD received €380,249 from the European Commission in 2014, €2,669,613 in 2013, €1,722,375 in 2012, €5,726,929 in 2011, €3,948,049 in 2010, €5,217,102 in 2009, €6,915,240 in 2008 and €3,915,338 in 2007.

This amounts to €30,494,895 in total between 2007 and 2014.

Yet Another Ludicrous Threat From the BSE Campaign Debunked

Commenting on the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign’s claim that 100,000 manufacturing jobs would be lost if we took back control, John Longworth, Chair of the Vote Leave Business Council, said:

‘These daily threats are becoming absurd. The jobs they refer to don’t even exist – so how can they be at risk?

‘Instead of listening to speculation from advisory groups, let’s look at what the job creators are actually telling us.

‘Businesses up and down the country say that the costly red tape and regulations emanating from Brussels are constraining their ability to innovate and create jobs.  If we Vote Leave on 23 June, we can change that – and look forward to a more prosperous country and a faster growing economy‘

BSE (Britain Stronger in Europe) claim that 100,000 manufacturing jobs are ‘at risk’ if we take back control and revive the claim that 3 million jobs are linked to the UK’s membership of the EU.

• The 100,000 manufacturing jobs do not currently exist, so cannot be ‘at risk’. The CEBR is merely claiming they might be created in the future if we stay in the EU.

• The CEBR uses EU-commissioned estimates of future benefits of the so-called ‘single market’, which have proven overly optimistic in the past.

• The CEBR has previously admitted that its figures for the number of jobs linked to trade should not be seen as job losses if we Vote Leave.

• The claim that 3 million jobs might be lost if we left the EU has been disowned by the IN campaign itself.

• The figures published today are almost identical to research published by the pro-euro campaign fifteen years ago, although the number of jobs ‘at risk’ has fallen by 200,000 since then.

• Sir Vince Cable made the same warnings he will make tomorrow about the effect on manufacturing if we didn’t join the euro, as did the EEF, Airbus and Siemens.

• If we Vote Leave, we will take back the power to make our own trade agreements, which could create 300,000 jobs.

The 100,000 manufacturing jobs do not currently exist, so cannot be ‘at risk’. The CEBR is merely claiming they might be created in the future if we stay in the EU.

The CEBR research concludes that 107,390 manufacturing jobs might be created in the event of a vote to remain in the EU. It uses reports prepared on behalf of European Union institutions to quantify the future benefits of the so-called ‘single market’.

The CEBR uses EU-commissioned estimates of future jobs to be created by the ‘single market’, which have been overly optimistic in the past.

Estimates by the EU about the benefits of the ‘single market’ have been overly optimistic in the past.

In April 1988, the Commission published a forecast claiming the ‘single market’ would yield ‘total economic gains of the order of 4¼% to 6½% of GDP for the Community as a whole’. This implied a middle forecast of gains of 5.4% of GDP.

This forecast was out by a factor of two. In 2012, the Commission claimed that the ‘single market’ had raised EU GDP by 2.13%, less than half what had been forecast in 1988. This itself seems an excessively optimistic claim in light of the same document’s (wholly implausible) assertion that the introduction of the single currency had boosted Eurozone GDP by 3.6%.

The CEBR has previously admitted that their figures for the number of jobs linked to trade should not be seen as job losses if we Vote Leave.

The CEBR report makes clear that its research is based on ‘Jobs linked to UK exports to EU countries’. This cannot be used a proxy for job loses if we leave the EU – as the CEBR itself has previously admitted.

In a similar piece of research for the pro-EU group British Influence, the CEBR said: ‘This piece of research does not imply that the estimated jobs would be lost if the UK were to leave the EU; it is an analysis of demand arising from UK exports to the EU’.

The CEBR has previously admitted in a report for BSE that ‘it is, obviously, impossible to calculate the impact of being in the EU’ and that ‘in truth, what life would be like outside the EU is impossible to predict with any degree of certainty’.

The CEBR has also previously admitted that ‘it would be wrong to say that all the benefits of the Single Market would automatically be lost if the UK were to leave the EU’.

The claim that 3 million jobs might be lost if we left the EU has been disowned by the IN campaign itself.

The Executive Director of the IN Campaign, Will Straw, has admitted: ‘We have not and have never claimed that 3 million jobs would be lost if we left the EU‘.

David Cameron has accepted trade would continue, meaning jobs would not be put at risk. He said: ‘If we were outside the EU altogether, we’d still be trading with all these European countries, of course we would … Of course the trading would go on … There’s a lot of scaremongering on all sides of this debate. Of course the trading would go on’.

The ‘3 million jobs’ figure was invented by the pro-euro campaign group, Britain in Europe, in 2000, as part of their attempts to scrap the pound.

The economist whose work they traduced, Dr Martin Weale, dismissed the figure as ‘pure Goebbels‘, stating that ‘in many years of academic research, I cannot recall such a wilful distortion of the facts’.

The figures published today are almost identical to research published by the pro-euro campaign fifteen years’ ago, although the number of jobs ‘at risk’ has fallen by 200,000.

The table below shows how many jobs the pro-euro campaign, Britain in Europe, claimed in 2000 were ‘at risk’ in each region if the UK left the EU, compared to the number of jobs its successor, the BSE campaign, now claims are linked to trade with the EU.

Leading campaigners in BSE were previously active in Britain in Europe, like Roland Rudd. They were wrong about the euro and they are wrong now.

Sir Vince Cable made the same warnings he will make today about the effect on manufacturing if we didn’t join the euro, as did the EEF, Airbus and Siemens.

Sir Vince Cable claimed manufacturing jobs were at risk if we didn’t scrap the pound, stating: ‘It is now becoming abundantly clear that British exclusion from the euro project is putting at risk thousands of jobs in areas of relatively high unemployment, like Wales and North East England. The Government has dithered long enough’ (Daily Mail, 5 July 2000, p. 45). In 2002, he said: ‘It is about time the secretary of state came out and made the case for the single currency so strongly’.

The EEF (The Manufacturers’ Organisation) also called for the pound to be scrapped: ‘The Engineering Employers’ Federation is backing the CBI’s call for the government to make a stronger case for the euro. “The government isn’t leading the debate,” said Martin Temple, EEF director-general’ (Sunday Business, 6 February 2000). It stated that: ‘The longer it goes on, the Government will just be playing Russian roulette with manufacturing jobs’ (The Sentinel, 3 July 2000, p. 4).

Siemens also claimed jobs and investment would be put at risk if we didn’t join the euro. In 1997, Jurgen Gehrels, Chief Executive of Siemens UK, said: ‘If Britain decides not to join the single currency it will definitely affect our investment decisions in the future. I am quite sure the same applies to others especially companies that serve not just the UK market but world markets’.

Noel Forgeard, Chief executive of Airbus, claimed it would be a ‘risk’ for the UK to stay out of the euro.

If we Vote Leave, we will take back the power to make our own trade agreements. This could create 300,000 jobs.

If we Vote Leave, the UK will leave the EU’s common commercial policy. At present, the UK is precluded from striking its own trade agreements because of the EU’s ‘common commercial policy’. The UK must set whatever tariffs the Council of Ministers, on a proposal from the European Commission, decides to impose.

Control over trade policy could create 300,000 jobs. The EU’s failure to conclude just five trade agreements, with the United States, Japan, ASEAN, India and Mercosur has, according to the European Commission’s own figures, cost the UK 284,341 jobs. A clear majority of British businesses want the UK Government, not the European Commission, in control of trade policy and have done so for over a decade. This would boost jobs, growth and investment.

Responding to the TUC report which claims that wages will fall if we leave the EU, Vote Leave Chair Gisela Stuart said:

‘The EU has been a disaster for workers, with unemployment in the double digits across the eurozone and harsh austerity measures implemented at the expense of vital public services.

‘The head of the In campaign Lord Rose has himself said that workers will get a pay rise if we Vote Leave. And as the Bank of England has confirmed, uncontrolled immigration has played a key role in bringing down wages.

‘After we Vote Leave, we can take back control of immigration and spend the £50 million we send to the EU every day on our priorities.’

The Head of the IN campaign has admitted wages will rise if we Vote Leave.

The Head of the IN campaign, Lord Rose admitted wages will go up’ if we Vote Leave, stating: ‘If you are short of labour, the price of labour will go up‘.

BlackRock Investment has also admitted the same thing.

The Bank of England has found that uncontrolled EU migration drives down wages.

It is well established that having more people in the workforce drives down wages.

The Bank of England has found that ‘the immigrant to native ratio has a small negative impact on average British wage’. The study found that ‘immigrants in recent years are most predominant in low-skill occupations’.

The study concluded that: ‘the biggest effect is in the semi/unskilled services sector, where a 10 percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants is associated with a 2 percent reduction in pay’.

Unemployment across the eurozone continues to dwarf that in the UK

Eurozone unemployment rate (seasonally adjusted) was 10.2% in April 2016.

Unemployment rate in Greece was 24.2% (February 2016) and 20.1% in Spain.

Youth unemployment in Greece was 51.4% (February 2016) and in Spain 45.5%.

From Jan-Mar 2016 the unemployment rate in the UK was 5.1%.

Responding to comments by Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco on how EU regulation is damaging the financial system, Moorad Choudhry, former Chief Executive of Habib Bank AG Zurich, London said:

‘The vast majority of the UK’s financial regulation is determined by the EU, and the warning today from the Bank of Italy that EU rules have made it virtually impossible for national governments to adequately respond to future banking crises should be of concern to us all.

‘Of additional concern is the proposed solution: further eurozone integration. This would mean that the UK’s influence within the EU would diminish even further – compounded by the fact that Mr Cameron gave up our right to veto such a move during his renegotiation.

‘Financial services regulation in the UK has been considered best-practice ever since the crash and indeed some aspects of it such as liquidity risk regulation is watered down in the EU implementation of Basel III. To maintain the most effective regulatory control of our own financial services as well as to prevent UK taxpayers potentially being on the hook for a future eurozone bank bailout, we have to Vote Leave.’

As reported online by the Financial Times today, the Governor of the Bank of Italy said in the central bank’s annual report:

‘There is the danger not only that national and European authorities will be unable to react adequately to major shocks, but even that they will have trouble avoiding contagion triggered by circumscribed tensions. To effectively reduce overall risk, the measures designed to attenuate specific fragilities must be accompanied by adequate safety nets based on supranational instruments.

‘In the case of the banking system, the possibility of utilizing public resources, whether national or European, as a means of crisis prevention and management has been virtually eliminated. International experience demonstrates that, in the face of a market failure, prompt public intervention can prevent the destruction of wealth without necessarily generating losses for the State, and indeed often producing profits. Greater scope for intervention of this sort, exceptional as it may be, should be reinstated.

‘Moreover, the European Commission’s position on state aid precludes the use of mandatory deposit insurance schemes for purposes of crisis prevention and orderly crisis resolution, even though these funds are private, given that they are financed and independently managed by banks; the effective conduct of recovery and resolution procedures, instead, requires the use of all the tools available. There is no reason to stigmatize as improper state aid those initiatives that help to correct market failures without undermining competition. A rigid interpretation of the regulations on state aid, with little regard for financial stability, has also hindered the plan for creating a company to manage Italian banks’ non-performing loans.’

‘The single currency needs to interact with a single fiscal policy. To be effective, a fiscal union requires the introduction of common debt instruments and, at the same time, decisions on the treatment of pre-existing national debt with a view to a single euro-area debt.’

Italy’s current debt to GDP ratio is 132% 2015.