And, in our second round-up of the day after Thursday’s Leaders’ debate, FactCheck is taking the rough with the smooth.

The claims
“The European Union is not perfect – of course not. I mean, this is a club that took 15 years to define “chocolate” in a chocolate directive. Anything that takes 15 years to define chocolate is not a model of democratic efficiency.”
Nick Clegg, Leaders’ debate, 22 April 2010

Believe it or not, chocolate has caused quite a stir in Brussels over the last 30 years, and just over ten years ago you couldn’t buy Cadbury’s in many countries on the continent. But can they really have taken 15 years to haggle over a definition?

Sara Jayne Stanes, chairman of the Academy of Chocolate, told FactCheck: “in a way he was wrong and in a way he was right”.

So, here’s a little history lesson of chocolate and the European Union.

Right from the off, when Britain joined the EU in 1973 it had to get special dispensation for its chocolate, along with Ireland and Denmark. British chocolate makers used five per cent vegetable fat in their confectionary, something the cocoa butter purists in countries like France and (of course) Belgium did not like.

Under a 1973 directive, countries could decide whether or not to allow the sale of the products with vegetable fat. Eight countries decided not to, so the products could not be sold there.

In 1984 the European Commission had a stab at trying to resolve the row by setting a five per cent limit, but the move was rejected by the European Parliament.

Debate sustained throughout the 1990s when the single European market should have allowed the free trade of chocolate. But yet it still took until 2000 before the Chocolate Directive was finally approved, allowing the sale of british chocolate across the continent. (And even then it changed the goalposts; milk chocolate produced in the UK now has to be exported as “family” milk chocolate because the cocoa content is lower than the 25 per cent the EU specify.)

So if you measure from 1984 to 2000, the 15 years is broadly right, but Mr Clegg could have referred to the 27-year chocolate war if he really wanted to press the point.

But, as Sara Jayne Stanes, chair of the Academy of Chocolate, told FactCheck, “it wasn’t really the EU itself that took the time, it was the interested parties.”

“I don’t think I have been on any more than one plane during this election campaign, I have been going around by trains.”
Gordon Brown, Leaders’ debate, 22 April 2010

When we asked Mr Brown’s press office to verify this fact they told us:

“Yes what Gordon Brown said was correct. He flew to Scotland and back the first Friday of the campaign. He has travelled by train or car at all other times.”

So while it could be strictly true that he only took ‘one plane’. He did make two separate journeys by plane – one there and one back.

“We have a proposal called the Green Deal, where we want to say to everyone in this country, that you could spend up to six and a half thousand pounds on your home, to insulate it and better protect it, and then you can see your energy bills come down. And we will have companies, and Marks & Spencers and others have expressed an interest, to come and carry out that work and to pay for it and to share with you the reduction in the bills.”
David Cameron, Leaders’ debate, 22 April 2010

A spokeswoman for Marks & Spencer pointed FactCheck to their service M & S Energy. The service offers customers incentives to reduce their household energy use. Asked whether the company had indeed expressed an interest in the Conservative Green Deal, the spokeswoman told us:

“It is something that came up at the end of last year. We said at the time that energy efficiency measures are something we are interested in. We have no formal agreement with the Tory party or anything like that.”

So M & S are already offering people the chance to make money from energy reduction. The company may well support a Conservative government’s efforts to develop this approach – but there is no firm arrangement for them to do so.

“You can’t deport 900,000 people. You don’t know where they live.”
Nick Clegg, Leaders’ debate, 22 April 2010

If you don’t know where they live, how do you know how many there are? Quite simply, you don’t. You can only make an educated estimate.

For this estimate, the Lib Dems took calculations in a report produced in April 2009 by the London School of Economics for (Conservative) London mayor Boris Johnson.

That document calculates the total number of irregular migrants in the UK, and children born in the UK as a result, as somewhere between 417,000 and 863,000 at the end of 2007.

The Lib Dems then rounded up to 900,000 to take into account the last two years, and favoured the higher estimate because they believe the scale of the problem has historically been underestimated.

But, ultimately, the number could be anywhere within that range, or higher, because by the very nature of being illegal immigrants, no one knows exactly how many there are.

As a clarification, the Lib Dems say that the amnesty they are proposing for illegal immigrants would only allow a relatively small percentage of this group of people because of the conditions they stipulate for granting residence. But, they say, the process would give a more accurate gauge of the true scale of illegal immigration.

“The situation is worse than Gordon Brown describes, because actually, according to the government’s own figures, we are potentially heading for power cuts in 2017.”
David Cameron, Leaders’ debate, 22 April 2010

Cue thoughts of blackouts a la the 1970s, but are we really heading back to a similar scenario to the three-day week?

Well, in an annex to the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan released last summer, the Expected Energy Unserved (a measure of the short-fall in supply and demand) does indeed show a spike in 2017, reaching 3,000 megawatt hours per year (which the Telegraph at the time pointed out was the equivalent to the whole Nottingham area being without electricity for a day).

The main reason is that, under the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive, many coal and oil-fired plants that do not meet modern standards on emissions will close by 2015. But the argument over what to replace them with is still raging.

The Conservatives have argued that even this shortfall assumes everything in the energy policy will happen as it is outlined, and so the gap could be much bigger. They also say delays in resolving the argument has narrowed the range of options that could be operational by 2017.

But, as John Loughhead, executive director at the UK Energy Research Centre, told FactCheck, it would be “unlikely” that the government would allow blackouts. He points to alternatives such as gas-fuelled power station which could be put in place within the next few years (planning permission allowing) to head off the problem.

“Three million jobs depend on our membership of the European Union.”
Gordon Brown, Leaders’ debate, 22 April 2010

A study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research carried out ten years ago found; “Detailed estimates from input-output tables suggest that up to 3.2 million UK jobs are now associated directly with exports of goods and services to other EU countries.”

However, the report also said: “This does not necessarily mean that the number of jobs in the economy is similarly affected”.

But, if Britain changed its political relationship with the EU, it does not automatically follow that those jobs would be at risk so insinuating that the jobs “depend” on Britain’s EU membership is certainly misleading.