Fears flurry of claims over UK’s EU membership will dismay public

The Britain Stronger in Europe report quotes research by the Centre for European Reform in June 2014, suggesting that the UK’s trade in goods was 55 per cent higher because of EU membership and that membership has resulted in an average £670,000 a year extra trade for each business that exported or imported goods with the EU.

...Vote Leave said the CER research focused on trade in goods, not services, which constituted 78 per cent of the UK economy. It also said CER had suggested EU membership might have resulted inasmuch as a 60 per cent drop in trade with the UK’s 30 largest non-EU trading partners.

CER said that, while it agreed that the single market for services had been “something of a disappointment”, it had found no evidence from its model that the EU depressed UK trade with the country’s top 30 non-EU trading partners.

“The positive result for the UK’s trade with the EU was significant to a 95 per cent confidence level,” said John Springford, senior research fellow at CER. CER said goods made up 67 per cent of the UK’s trade in 2014, and services 33 per cent.