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Remain and Leave clash in final EU referendum debate

Remain and Leave campaigners have clashed at the final major EU referendum debate before polls open on Thursday.

The BBC debate took place in front of 6,000 people at Wembley Arena.

Participants included Boris Johnson for Leave, and his successor as Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, who is backing Remain.

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Fact check: 'UK governments already provided rights for workers'

UK governments have led the way in providing good rights for workers, according to Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom.

The Leave campaigner claimed the UK had equal pay legislation before it joined the EU, while shared parental leave, tax free childcare, minimum wage and national living wage are all UK laws.

It is correct that the national minimum wage and the national living wage are both products of UK law and not part of EU law, according to fact-checking organisation Full Fact, analysing the live BBC referendum debate.

The same can also be said for shared parental leave and tax-free childcare.

Equal pay has been part of UK law since 1970, before the UK joined the EU, but it is also an EU law and was at the time the UK became a member.

As an EU member, the UK couldn’t now abolish that law. The same goes for lots of other employment rights: the UK may have chosen to have them anyway, but the EU means we can’t choose in future to get rid of them.

Other employment rights set in EU law, such as the right to paid holiday, didn’t exist in the UK before we joined the EU and were brought in despite British government objections.

It would be up to our Parliament to decide what rights, if any, that come from EU law would be kept if the UK left.

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