Hello and welcome to a special EU referendum series of more or less.

We are as always your guide to the numbers that surround us in the news.

And we couldn't help noticing that a lot of the referendum coverage

involves two politicians shouting contradictory statistics at each other.

Entertaining, if you like that sort of thing,

but not exactly helpful if you're hoping to make this vital decision

with the relevant facts in front of you.

So in this series we're not going to be talking to the politicians at all.

We're just going to try to figure out the truth.

Bracing concept, isn't it?

We'll be looking at some of the big questions.

Immigration, lawmaking, regulations and trade.

But in this first program, two very basic questions,

how much would we save if we left the EU? and what would it cost us if we did?

The first question is more straightforward.

We don't need to make any forecasts.

We can just look at the numbers from recent history and figure out what the membership

fee of the EU actually is.

Now the Leave campaign is very clear on this point.

The EU membership fee is 350 million pounds a week and if we

left that's money we'd be able to spend as we wished. Here's Giesler

Stewart the chair of the Leave campaign.

...