PETWINA

According to Gerard Batten's booklet published by the Bruges Group it is £164.6m gross and £138.6m net per day.

Bob FM

Strange thing is Anthony says he uses Batten's book and yet I have pointed out several times where Anthony has been wrong. But he still maintains that we pay a lot less.

Michael Heaver

I think that leaflet is bloody mint. I hope we can get them out to the public on mass in the run up to the European Elections. It demonstrate extremely well that UKIP is the radical alternative on the issue whereas the Tories and Labour are the same - as well as appealing to a massive cross section who are going to hate AT LEAST one of the PM's pictured.

EDIT: Plus, imagine the front of that leaflet as one of the big roadside banners....quality.

Unionist

Some people regularly confuse the cost of EU membership with how much we pay to the EU.

There is a huge difference between how much the EU costs (taking into account the cost of regulation, etc) and how much we pay to the EU. To talk of the cost of regulation as if it is a payment to the EU is quite simply wrong.

All governments are fond of regulating and if the EU was not churning out the regulations I suspect that we would have enough home-grown ones to deal with.

If we left the EU many of the more significant regulations would be likely to be retained. For one thing, those involving working conditions or that impact on benefits would be very difficult to reverse. It would also be the case that firms trading with the EU would continue to meet certain regulatory requirements.

Non-EU regulations also cost, of course. Governments choose to put in place certain things (like the minimum wage) that have a hidden cost on businesses and consumers. Depending on your viewpoint you may regard such regulations as necessary social protection or a costly burden on business, but that is a matter of debate. It is the fact that there is no room to debate EU regulations that is the major issue - its lack of accountability.

Some regulations (especially concerning common standards) are actually helpful to business and some measures (like enforcing competition and preventing state subsidy) help the economy generally. Breaking down the artificial barriers to trade and state subsidies across the rest of Europe, especially in the services sector, would actually benefit us. Competition regulations have some negative immediate effects but on the whole are greatly beneficial.

Also often cited in the costs of the EU - and sometimes wrongly included in what we pay to the EU - is the trade deficit. I don't know how many times I need to say this but I'll repeat it again: trade is a two-way process. One side hands over money, the other side supplies goods and services. If we are paying money to the other EU countries (or, strictly speaking, to their businesses) it is because they are supplying us with goods and services to the equivalent value. The trade deficit is not a payment to the EU and it is extremely tenuous (to say the least) to include it as a cost of EU membership.

So, in short:

- What the EU costs is a completely different concept to what we pay to the EU, just as the cost of home-grown legislation is not the same as how much we pay in taxes.
- Many of the cited costs, especially in terms of regulatory costs, would not magically vanish if we left the EU but we could at least debate them openly.
- Some of the cited costs, such as the trade deficit, are particularly tenuous. To further confuse these with 'payments' to the EU is bizarre.

There are plenty of objections to be made to the EU but unfounded claims about what we are paying to the EU will discredit the whole argument.

As for the leaflet itself, I agree entirely with marcus.

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Bob FM

Unionist I agree with your analysis, however it is a very real burden for business as the BBC say:
BCC
The British Chambers of Commerce’s ‘Burdens Barometer’ calculates the cost to business of complying with everything from health and safety to employment regulation. It calculates the cost to business of complying with new regulation since 1998 as now standing at more than £65 billion, this has increased from £10 billion in 2001; £15 billion in 2002; £20.6 billion in 2003; £30 billion in 2004; £38.9 billion in 2005; £50.27 billion in 2007 and £65.99 billion in 2008.
For most businesses this figure does not just represent a direct financial cost, but lost man hours and resources. For smaller companies without in house legal teams or HR departments complying with regulation diverts time away from running a successful and profitable business.
This disproportionate cost to smaller businesses of new regulation is not yet fully recognised by government departments. Research carried out by the British Chambers of Commerce as part of our annual impact assessment audit indicates that as many as 8 out of 10 impact assessments assign the same cost to small businesses as to large

Anthony Butcher

I wasn't aware that you had done so. If I missed something, then I apologise. In the mean time I would refer you to Unionist's excellent post above.

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Bob FM

You obviously missed my post above yours, I have commented. I guess that's just the time lapse. 62% of the above costings are from EU generated regs.

Unionist

I agree that regulation is a burden for business, as I have often stated (though strictly speaking there are instances when regulation can help business, but in general it is burdensome).

However, that was not particularly what I was arguing about. The main point of my post was to distinguish between the costs of EU membership and payments to the EU.

A secondary point was to argue that not all supposed costs of the EU would go away even if we left the EU.

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Anthony Butcher

Many of those regs would quite possibly have been introduced in Britain anyway, and leaving the EU wouldn't necessarily get rid of them.

What's more, when we talk about the 'cost' what we actually mean is employing extra people to deal with it, or reducing the efficiency of existing staff (presumably necessitating more staff at some point). In other words, any unnecessary regulations potentially increase employment, albeit in a massively inefficient way.

Thus getting rid of swathes of regulation will also have ramifications. While it will make companies more efficient it will also result in unemployment rising (in the short term at least). I don't know how the BCC calculates its numbers but I would be impressed if it takes into account the reduction in unemployment and subsequent increase in tax revenues from over regulation.

Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that it isn't anywhere near as simple as eurosceptics often make out.

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bdf4bnp

The sheer amount of regulations that spew out of the EU, costing Britain REAL money, is nothing like what this country has ever seen before. It take the wastefulness of state governance to a new level of waste, as it is supranational state.

It is a one size fits all regulation too, making it even more damaging.

There is no exact figure, but I would say the ones on the leaflet are conservative to say the least.

While I for one am grateful for Anthony's continued attacks on UKIP, on this one issue he is barking up the wrong tree. The EU costs Britain too much in all kinds of things, but money is a huge one.