The EU costs the UK money, the most recent statistics I can find are from 2018 when we contributed 20 billion with a return of 11 billion. Yes, the EU has provided grants for the regeneration of cities, agriculture etc, but if we hadn’t paid the EU 20 billion pounds, we could have ‘cut out the middle man.’
No, EU membership did not cost the UK money. You are looking at contributions to the EU budget and not factoring in the immense economic benefits that come from the single market and customs free trade. It is indisputable that the arrangement provided us with a far greater economic benefit than the amount that we paid in contributions. Even our own Leave-crazy Government has admitted this repeatedly in its own forecasts showing that ANY version of leaving will make us poorer. And the more extreme/ harder the exit, the worse off we will be. In short, your argument here is factually wrong.
Some of the countries in the EU are a financial risk. An example of this is Greece with the major problems it had with the recession of 2008. As part of the EU, we were at risk of being drawn in to help out when countries were struggling. That would have cost us more money. I do think, to control this further, the EU would have drawn us in to the euro currency, which would have put us at more risk financially.
Nope. The UK had the most advantageous deal of any country in the EU, hence it being so mind boggling that we willingly gave it up. We had a veto on providing financial support to other EU countries in distress. We were not part of the Euro and had a veto on joining it so the issues with that currency did not impact us directly in the way you suggest.
Student finance – EU students are eligible for student loans from Student Finance England/Wales/NI or the Student Awards Agency Scotland, and pay the same tuition fee as UK students. International students pay a much higher fee. Whilst this is great that people want to come here and study, EU students (and our home students) are going to be less financially appealing to universities. The benefit of a home student is that they will, hopefully, stay in the UK and use their degree here, either to support the country, either practically (medicine/dentistry/engineering) or financially, by taking better paid jobs. EU students, who can apply to study here relatively easily and cheaply, can head straight back to their own home countries, having had the benefit of capped tuition fees and student finance. International students have to jump through more hoops in order to study here.
I'm not sure what your point is here. Post-exit per your argument there will be even more foreign students that are more appealing to universities than UK students as EU students will now also pay higher fees. So even less incentive to give places to UK students?
In reality anyway that is not how things work. Universities cannot simply pack out their entire campus with only foreign students.
Also if you look at the evidence, EU students/ immigrants tend to stick around while working in their prime, and either marry into the local population or move home later in life before they get old and start costing us money. So EU immigrants were always a bonus economically; paying more tax on average than UK citizens and claiming less in benefits etc. Whereas for immigrants from other non-EU countries the opposite is the case. Many studies over the years have proved this.
Finally, the ability to study in other EU countries and be treated the same in terms of finance as local students was a reciprocal benefit, that the Leave voters have taken away from our young people, much to the detriment of their opportunities.
NHS – the latest figures I can find relating to health tourism in the UK are from a BMJ article from 2018 and which looked at a study in 2017. Health tourism does happen, the costs aren’t huge but it does occur. – in the small study they undertook, 50 of the 8894 people treated were ineligible for NHS treatment. Estimates of the cost vary widely between 350 million and two billion pounds annually. This isn’t a huge amount in the grand scheme of things. However, an elective bowel resection, for instance, costs just under twenty thousand (excluding the cost of any readmissions and further treatment to treat the underlying cause, ie chemo or radiotherapy), so even a saving of 350 million would mean we have the available funds to pay for seventeen and a half thousand major operations per year. This is nothing to do with the 350 million weekly that is talked about – I do not, and have never believed the NHS would get given 350 million pounds a week). This is an annual cost and is just highlighting what the money spent on health tourism annually could actually cover for those people eligible for NHS treatment.
The arrangement in the EU is that while you can get health treatment in any EU country as an EU citizen without paying, that foreign health service can take your details and bill it back to your Government. Therefore, "health tourism" within the EU did not exist: the Government providing the healthcare could always recover the cost from the country from which the citizen originated. There were many failings in the NHS of them not doing this, but that was a UK systems problem, not an issue with the EU. We had the right to get that money back, all we had to do was ask for it.
"Health tourism" is when people get health treatment from the NHS who are not entitled to it and the cost cannot be recovered. The EU system meant it could always be recovered if we chose to ask the relevant Governments to return it. It is a system that has functioned perfectly well for decades, hence the European Health Insurance Card: that was its purpose.
Furthering on from health tourism, when people come to the UK from overseas, there are generally requirements about the person’s English language ability (I know there will be exceptions eg asylum seekers). People from the EU do not have to meet this requirement due to the freedom of movement. I am going to be honest here and say I know how the NHS works but do not know about other government bodies. The NHS bears the cost of interpreters when needed for appointments. We are not meant to use friends or family members to interpret, as we do not know that they are interpreting correctly, either because they can’t or because they have ulterior motives, and have to arrange interpreters. These are costly for the NHS (if I remember rightly, the cost for a two-hour appointment (I work somewhere where the appointments are long) for an interpreter for one patient was something like two hundred and fifty pounds. That was the invoice we received, including travel time for the interpreter. I believe there were no agency fees paid on that as it was via the government translation service). Again, two hundred and fifty pounds is nothing, really. But the cumulative cost of this must be substantial. And I know not all people from outside of the EU will have a level of English good enough for a health appointment, but the numbers of people needing a translator (in my experience) are fewer. As I said, I only know how the NHS works but assume it must be a similar set-up in other government organisations.
Again, a non-issue. The vast majority of EU immigrants to the UK speak English. And no, it is not a requirement for immigrants from other countries to do so; many enter on spouse or family visas etc and often don't learn the language at all. Can you provide a figure for these translation costs broken down by language? For this to be a reason to unleash the hell of Brexit in terms of the loss or rights and jobs etc on the UK population, presumably you've researched them and they are very significant? Bearing in mind that the Bank of England says that Brexit, in the long run, will cost us far more than Covid. I really doubt this is more than a drop in the ocean and I suspect if you do have figures for it you'll find the majority of the cost is for translation from non-EU languages.
I am sure there are other reasons people voted to leave the EU, but these are my reasons and I continue to believe they are important.
I really hope so and would love to hear them. We are all waiting to hear of even one significant benefit that will make this shitshow worthwhile.