As any policeman will tell you, those who change their story repeatedly will probably be lying. It’s no different in politics.

The percentage of our laws decided at a European level, causes such confusion amongst Eurosceptics. UKIP’s David Bannerman thinks it is 60%, Nigel Farage prefers 70% whilst Mike Nattrass, bizarrely, suggests it is 90%!

The Tories are slightly more reserved, with their spokespeople hopping arbitrarily between “just over half” (David Sumberg MEP) and around 80% (Dan Hannan MEP).

Surely the figure is a factual one, not a subjective one, because it is a figure borne out of actual statistics. That statistic is actually 9% (stated in an answer to a Parliamentary Question by John Redwood MP).

So, where have they got these figures from? Have they just randomly plucked them out of the air? Well, quite possibly, for some of them at least. One or two, I would suggest, are a little more sneaky.

If you look at the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ figures, around 57% of the secondary legislation that has come from this department, has actually been agreed upon with our European neighbours. I would suggest that those who say “60% of our laws come from the EU” are working from this DEFRA figure and, of course, deliberately misinterpreting them as being representative of all subjects, whereas in fact, the environment and agriculture are, for good reasons, atypically high.

Notice that they fail to mention how 0% of our primary health, defence, education and culture/media/sport laws have come from the EU. This is hardly the “handing over of sovereignty” that they suggest!