In High Town one Saturday, I was given some leaflets by the ‘Vote Leave’ team. Undecided as to which way to vote, I took these to read at home.

I was shocked at the misinformation, flaws and downright nonsense, dressed up as ‘facts’, contained in these leaflets. I am by no means fully conversant with all the complexities of the pros and cons of the two sides of the debate, but the errors were so glaring that it was difficult to take any of the content at face value.

Taking just one leaflet, and one paragraph, stating that the EU has taken control over ‘...our borders, our public services, and whether prisoners have the right to vote’. It is the European Court of Human Rights that has ruled on prisoner voting rights, and the ECHR has nothing to do with the EU. It’s an entirely separate institution, with separate membership, set up by Britain after WWII to enforce the Convention on Human Rights that we helped to write. Britain has always been a signatory to this convention; leaving the EU won’t change that.

The statement is equally mistaken with regard to our borders. We retain full border controls as an EU member as we are outside the borderless Schengen area. What is more, as members of the EU we have our border controls at Calais rather than Dover. We also use the Dublin regulation — the EU agreement that asylum-seekers should be dealt with by the EU country in which they first arrived. Britain has employed this rule to send thousands of asylum-seekers back to other parts of the EU.

Perhaps the most egregious claim is this: “We can save billions of pounds to fund the NHS”. Now, it may be true that the (disputed) figures quoted could fund a new hospital every week, but it’s more likely to fund a ladder to the moon. Does anybody really believe that our government, or one with Boris Johnson at the helm, will be spending money on new NHS hospitals after Brexit? It is fundamentally disingenuous of the ‘Out’ campaign to claim this.

Emma Telford

Hereford