EU TV Debate: Cameron Called for Honesty Then Told Five Outright Lies in 30 Minutes

Responding to David Cameron’s appearance in the ITV debate, Vote Leave Chief Executive Matthew Elliott said:

‘Earlier David Cameron called for more honesty in the EU debate but he told five outright lies.

‘He lied about being able to remove EU jobseekers without a job after six months, our ability to stop foreign criminals walking into the UK, our ability to deport foreign criminals, his pledge to restrict benefits and how much his government is investing in the NHS.

‘He still claims that Turkey won’t join the EU while his Government is spending £1 billion to help speed up their membership. The truth is you can’t trust anything David Cameron says on the EU. That is why you should Vote Leave on 23 June.’

The myriad of lies and falsities spouted by David Cameron are comprehensively debunked

• Terrorists. In 2015, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled the UK could not exclude ZZ from the UK because of EU law, despite the fact that he was a suspected terrorist. The Commission concluded that: ‘We are confident that the Appellant was actively involved in the GIA [Algerian Armed Islamic Group], and was so involved well into 1996. He had broad contacts with GIA extremists in Europe. His accounts as to his trips to Europe are untrue. We conclude that his trips to the Continent were as a GIA activist’.

• Killers. In 1995, Chindamo, who is an Italian citizen, murdered the headteacher Philip Lawrence who went to help a 13-year-old boy who was being attacked. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996. Chinamo was released in 2010 but recalled to prison due to accusations he intimidated and robbed a man at a cash machine, charges of which he was later acquitted. In 2007, Mr Justice Collins, sitting in the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, ruled that removing Chindamo would be ‘disproportionate’ under EU law‘. David Cameron said that Tribunal’s decision ‘flies in the face of common sense. It is a shining example of what is going wrong in our country. He is someone who has been found guilty of murder and should be deported back to his country… What about the rights of Mrs Lawrence or the victim?’. Cameron said: ‘This does seem to be complete madness‘.

• Rapists. Mircea Gheorghiu, a Romanian national, entered the UK without leave in January 2007. In November 2007, he was convicted of driving a motor vehicle with excess alcohol, fined and disqualified from driving for 20 months. It later emerged that he had ‘a criminal record in Romania. In 1990 he was convicted of the offence of rape and sentenced to 6 years imprisonment. Between 2001 and March 2002 he was convicted on three occasions of forestry offences, cutting timber without a licence, and received custodial sentences on the last two occasions.’ The Secretary of State removed him from the UK in March 2015. Nonetheless, on 18 November 2015, Mr Justice Blake, sitting in the Upper Tribunal, decided this was unlawful under EU law, ruling Gheorghiu must be ‘reunited with his family as quickly as possible’ and that he was ‘entitled to a permanent residence on his return and the residence card issued to him will reflect that‘

• The Government claims that the renegotiation means it will be able to ‘prevent dangerous EU nationals from coming to the UK and make it easier to deport them if they have been living in the UK’. This is false. The renegotiation does not in any way relax the onerous requirements of EU law which prevent the UK deporting dangerous criminals.

• There is no proposal to amend the Treaties or the 2004 Free Movement Directive. The proposals agreed at the European Council will be contained ‘in a Communication’ to be issued by the European Commission. As the Commission accepts, a ‘Communication is a policy document with no mandatory authority. The Commission takes the initiative of publishing a Communication when it wishes to set out its own thinking on a topical issue. A Communication has no legal effect’.

• The Government’s proposals will have no legal status and are, in any event, merely restatements of the status quo.

David Cameron is misleading the public when he says he is putting an additional £12 billion into the NHS. This was a lie.

The Government has only committed to spend an additional £8 billion. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said: ‘we will commit to a minimum real-terms increase in NHS funding of £8bn in the next five years’.

The Government will not even meet this target. In December 2015, the Nuffield Trust, the Health Foundation and the King’s Fund said that health spending in England will rise by just £4.5 billion in real terms between 2015/2016 and 2020/2021. This is because health spending not included in NHS England’s budget will fall by £3.6 billion, despite NHS England’s budget being protected. The organisations stated the real terms increase was ‘clearly much less than was expected when the NHS settlement was announced‘.

David Cameron claimed he got what he wanted on benefits. This was a lie.

The 2015 Conservative Manifesto stated ‘We will insist that EU migrants who want to claim tax credits and child benefit must live here and contribute to our country for a minimum of four years’. Migrants will still be able to claim benefits during their first four years in the UK.

The Conservative Manifesto promised: ‘If an EU migrant’s child is living abroad, then they should receive no child benefit or child tax credit, no matter how long they have worked in the UK and no matter how much tax they have paid’. The export of child benefit will continue after his deal.

David Cameron claimed EU jobseekers must leave after six months. This was a lie.

The Prime Minister promised that all jobseekers would be removed after six months and has claimed this has already been achieved. In 2014, David Cameron promised that: ‘[I]f an EU jobseeker has not found work within six months, they will be required to leave’. In his Chatham House speech in November 2015, the Prime Minister said that this pledge had ‘already been achieved’.

The EU Treaties forbid the removal of all jobseekers after six months. In 1991, the European Court of Justice ruled that the Treaties forbid the removal of jobseekers from another EU member state regardless of the duration of their stay if ‘the person concerned provides evidence that he is continuing to seek employment and that he has genuine chances of being engaged’.

The Free Movement Directive forbids the removal of all jobseekers after six months. The Free Movement Directive provides that: ‘an expulsion measure may in no case be adopted against Union citizens or their family members if… the Union citizens entered the territory of the host Member State in order to seek employment. In this case, the Union citizens and their family members may not be expelled for as long as the Union citizens can provide evidence that they are continuing to seek employment and that they have a genuine chance of being engaged’.

The Government admitted in December that many jobseekers could remain for longer than six months. The Home Office Minister, James Brokenshire, admitted in December that some EU migrants can ‘keep the status of jobseeker for longer than six months’.

There is no mechanism for monitoring whether or not jobseekers remain in the UK for over six months. In any event, EU law forbids systematic verification of whether EU citizens are lawfully resident in the UK. It states that ‘this verification shall not be carried out systematically’.

David Cameron claimed he had a deal to deport foreign criminals. This is a lie.

We are not able to deport EU criminals because of EU free movement rules. David Cameron was actually referring to the EU’s prisoner transfer agreement – this has been a failure. The number of foreign nationals offenders from the EU has increased since it came into force. This costs us over £150 million each year.

In November 2008, the EU established a prisoner transfer agreement, which allows for the transfer of prisoners to serve their sentences in their country of nationality without their consent. This entered into force in December 2011, but is yet to enter into force in respect of transfers to certain member states such as Poland. The Government has claimed that: ‘the EU PTA will result in a significant increase in the number of prisoners transferred’.

Just 73 prisoners have been transferred under this agreement according to the Government.

The number of FNOs who are EU citizens has increased from 3,427 on 31 December 2010 to 4,203 on 31 March 2016, an increase of 22.6%, or 776 prisoners. The proportion of FNOs who are EU citizens has increased from 31.54% on 31 December 2010 to 42.15% on 31 March 2016, an increase of 34%..

The cost of providing 4,203 prison places to house them is £152.4 million each year.

Cameron claims he got a substantial renegotiation. No powers will be brought back by his deal.

The Decision states that: ‘The competences conferred by the Member States on the Union can be modified, whether to increase or reduce them, only through a revision of the Treaties with the agreement of all Member States.’ Since there will be no Treaty, no powers will be returned to the UK.

Before the agreement, the EU had 28 legislative competences over the UK. Today, it still possesses 28.

The Decision states that it respects ‘the powers of the institutions of the Union, including throughout the legislative and budgetary procedures’. This makes clear the Decision will not affect the EU’s powers to legislate for the UK or to demand £350 million per week from Britain.

David Cameron’s deal failed to return powers. These include:

• Social and employment legislation. David Cameron once said that ‘it will be a top priority for the next Conservative government to restore social and employment legislation to national control’. This deal does nothing to return control of social and employment legislation.

• The Charter of Fundamental Rights. David Cameron once promised ‘a complete opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights’. The last Conservative Manifesto promised to ‘make our own Supreme Court the ultimate arbiter of human rights matters in the UK’. None of this is possible while the Charter remains in force. This deal does not end the Charter’s application in the UK.

• Breaking the link between British courts and Strasbourg. The last Conservative Manifesto promised to ‘break the formal link between British courts and the European Court of Human Rights’. Yet the contents of the European Convention on Human Rights (as interpreted the European Court of Human Rights) will continue to constitute ‘general principles’ of EU law‘.

• Ending the European Court’s control of criminal law. David Cameron once said his proposals involved ‘limiting the European Court of Justice’s jurisdiction over criminal law to its pre-Lisbon level’. The Home Secretary promised that the Prime Minister ‘must look again at this matter in our renegotiations with the European Union before the referendum’. This has not happened.

• Ending the EU’s ability to regulate working hours in the NHS. In his Bloomberg Speech, the Prime Minister said: ‘it is neither right nor necessary to claim that the integrity of the single market, or full membership of the European Union requires the working hours of British hospital doctors to be set in Brussels irrespective of the views of British parliamentarians and practitioners’. This has not happened.

Cameron claimed GDP was the key measure of political success. He has previously rejected this view.

In 2010, Cameron has said ‘GDP is an incomplete way of measuring a country’s progress‘.

The UK has no influence in the EU institutions which are unaccountable to the British public.

Every time the UK has voted against a measure in the Council of Ministers, it has been outvoted. This is happening with increased frequency: of the UK’s 72 defeats, over half (40) have occurred in the last five years.

The UK’s representatives are often outvoted in the European Parliament as well. The majority of UK MEPs voted against 576 EU proposals between 2009 and 2014, but 485 still passed.

The UK has lost 101 cases in the European Court since it joined the then European Economic Community in 1973, a failure rate of 77.1%. The current Government has lost 16 out of 20 cases in the European Court, a failure rate of 80%.

Research for the House of Commons Library shows 60% of UK law is made in Brussels.

An Australian-style points system will make it easier to recruit skilled staff.

11% of doctors are from the European Economic Area, whereas 25.7%, or 70,404 are from the rest of the world. This is despite the stringent restrictions that apply to migrants from outside the EU coming to the UK.

If we Vote Leave, we can prioritise those with the skills our NHS needs and we can end the open door to the rest of Europe.

The NHS is under major pressure from immigration.

In the financial year 2015-2016, NHS providers experienced a record NHS deficit of £2.45 billion. NHS Improvement has stated: ‘Rising demand, especially for urgent and emergency care… continued to add significant cost pressures to the sector’.

This puts pressure on accident and emergency services: ‘The number of patients who waited longer than four hours on a trolley for a bed in 2015/16 increased by 26.3% to 387,809, compared to 2014/15’.

In the year ending September 2015, 172,000 persons (net) came to UK from the EU.

Between 2005 and 2014, there were 475,935 live births to mothers who were EU citizens.  The number of births to EU mothers rose from 24,942 in 2005 to 64,067 in 2014, an increase of 157%. This is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Manchester to the UK population. With the estimated cost of maternity care in the NHS being £2,800, the cost of providing NHS services to those families could be over £1.33bn.

GP registrations have risen by a million and a half over the last three years. In April 2013, there were 56.0 million patients registered with a general practice. In January 2016, there were 57.5 million patients registered with a general practice.

The number of A&E attendances has increased from 14.0 million in 2002-2003 to 22.4 million in 2014-2015, an increase of 59.16% in the last thirteen years.

David Cameron used to admit you could control immigration without harming the economy. He was right.

In 2011, Cameron said: ‘So what I’m trying to say today is, you know, those who say you can’t control immigration without damaging the economy, that this is a forlorn hope, I really believe that’s wrong. We can control immigration. We can do it in a way that doesn’t damage the economy’.

A report for the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries shows that introducing an Australian-style points system and reducing migration would bring billions in additional revenue and lead to a higher state pension.

Cameron has broken his promise to fix free movement and to cut migration to the tens of thousands. He failed.

In his 2014 conference speech, Cameron said: ‘Numbers that have increased faster than we in this country wanted at a level that was too much for our communities, for our labour markets. All of this has to change – and it will be at the very heart of my renegotiation strategy for Europe.

The 2010 Conservative Manifesto promised that ‘we will take steps to take net migration back to the levels of the 1990s – tens of thousands a year, not hundreds of thousands’.

The 2015 Conservative Manifesto promised to ‘keep our ambition of delivering annual net migration in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands’.

In 2015 alone, 270,000 persons came to the UK from the EU. This is the equivalent of a city the size of Newcastle. This is up from 264,000 in 2014. In the same year, net migration from the EU was 184,000.

EU migrants can come without a job offer, despite David Cameron’s promises he would end this.

As early as 1991, the European Court held that the ‘Treaty entails the right for nationals of Member States to move freely within the territory of the other Member States and to stay there for the purposes of seeking employment.

This is still the case – in the last year alone 77,000 EU migrants came to the UK looking for a job – despite the PM’s promise in 2014 to stop this. In November 2014, the Prime Minister, David Cameron, promised that ‘we want EU jobseekers to have a job offer before they come here… So let’s be clear what all these changes taken together will mean. EU migrants should have a job offer before they come here’.

Cameron claimed that proposals on ‘ever closer union’ will have an impact. This is wrong.

The UK’s former Advocate General in the European Court, Professor Sir Francis Jacobs QC, has said the phrase ‘does not create rights or obligations. It does not impose obligations on member states’ and that there is ‘very little basis’ for the view it has been used in integrationist judgments of the European Court. Removing the phrase will have no impact on the European Court and will not stop further European integration.