A plague on both your houses: MPs attack EU referendum campaigns
Both sides in the EU referendum campaign have faced the ire of one of Westminster's most feared MPs, head of the Treasury Select Committee (TSC) Andrew Tyrie, this afternoon.
Tyrie, and the bipartisan TSC which includes campaigners on both sides of the debate, has attacked both sides for their shoddy use of statistics and blamed them for peddling "bogus claims" and "impoverishing political debate".
Read more: Who's who on the Treasury Select Committee
The accusations come in a weighty report into the economic effects of the UK's membership of the EU, the result of a string of interviews with campaigners and experts, published this afternoon.
"The arms race of ever more lurid claims and counter-claims made by both the leave and remain sides is not just confusing the public. It is impoverishing political debate," Tyrie said.
Today is the first day of the main campaign. It needs to begin with an amnesty on misleading, and at times bogus, claims. The public are thoroughly fed up with them. The public are right.
– Andrew Tyrie MP, chair of the Treasury Select Committee
The most ferocious criticism was arguably reserved for the "highly misleading" use of the £350m a week figure Leave campaigners say the UK sends to the EU every week, as the TSC backed up similar criticism from the UK's top statisticians this week.
The TSC said the use of the statistic was "deeply troubling", adding: "The public should discount this claim."
But, Tyrie said: "Leading remain campaigners are also at it".
Read more: Here's David Cameron's "positive case" for staying in the EU
The committee picked apart the claim that three million jobs in the UK rely on our membership of the European Union and also blasted George Osborne personally for misleading the public with his claim that every UK household would be £4,300 worse off if the UK leaves the EU.
The use of the £4,300 figure by the Remain side, "is likely to be misconstrued by readers, especially in the heat of a campaign, and probably has confused them.
Read more: Are the polls really moving to Remain?
"It is disappointing that the Treasury and the chancellor place so much emphasis on a single figure. Any single number that purports to encapsulate the effects of Brexit can be misunderstood, all the more so if it is used – as this number has been on occasion – unqualified."
Turning to the likely impact of leaving the EU, the TSC urged caution when looking at any predictive economic models.
Summary of the range of GDP per household affects a vote to leave the EU could have on the UK studied by the TSC.
However, the TSC tentatively concluded: "The balance of recent submissions seen by the Committee is that Brexit is likely to have a net negative impact in the long-term because the costs of a fall in trade exceed the gains in other areas, although the size of that impact varies considerably between different studies."
Presenting the report, Tyrie added: "A period of uncertainty will almost certainly accompany Brexit and it is plausible that this would weaken the pound, reduce domestic and foreign direct investment, and increase borrowing costs. The balance of evidence seen by the Committee strongly supports the view that there will be a short-term economic cost to Brexit."
The responses
With both sides coming in for a mauling by the elected representatives, did they usher out apologies and commit to running the final weeks of the campaign in a much more transparent and statistically robust fashion?
Let's see …
Britain Stronger in Europe's
Britain Stronger in Europe, the official campaign to stay in the EU came out with a quote from Labour committee member Wes Streeting MP, pointing out the TSCs "savage" attack on the "highly misleading and appalling Vote Leave campaign".
The Committee’s report has confirmed everyone’s suspicions about Vote Leave – that they are a bunch of charlatans who mislead the British people and treat parliamentary democracy with contempt.
On the economy, the case is now closed. Every expert accepts that leaving would result in an economic shock causing jobs to be lost, the pound to crash, and prices to rise.
Leaving the EU would be a risk to our economy we cannot afford to take. Vote Leave cannot be trusted to run a campaign properly, let alone do what is best for our country. The evidence is clear – Britain is stronger, safer and better off in Europe, while leaving would be a leap in the dark.
– Wes Streeting MP, Treasury Select Committee member and Remain campaigner
Vote Leave's response
Vote Leave also went for the idea of using an actual TSC member to highlight the TSC's report to attack the other side. They went for Conservative Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, who claimed the TSC (of which he is a member, remember), "slammed" the chancellor for his "dodgy numbers".
The Treasury Select Committee’s unanimous report shows that David Cameron’s renegotiation fell short of the ambitions expressed in his Bloomberg speech of January 2013 and that the In campaign has used a misleading figure on jobs while the figure for the cost of imports if we left the EU is 'unhelpful and tendentious'.
Most shockingly the Chancellor, George Osborne, 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. As the Committee notes, it is 'disappointing' that he places so much emphasis on a single misunderstood figure.
– Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, Treasury Select Committee member and Leave campaigner
Old habits die hard, it seems.