LETTER: EU is crushing British business

The CBI represents Big Business, and the EU favours multi-national companies while crushing the little man out of existence. For instance, large corporations benefit from EU rules by being able to declare their UK profits in an offshore tax haven such as Bermuda and paying no tax in this country.

Perhaps Mr Goodall ought to read professor Tim Congdon’s detailed and well researched analysis of the true cost of our EU membership, in which he includes, inter alia, not only the direct cost of our membership, but also the cost of all the EU regulations that are crushing the lifeblood out of British businesses, the cost of the Common Agricultural Policy and other protectionist measures, the waste, fraud and corruption which is endemic to the EU, and the drain on this country of ‘benefit tourism’ and unfettered immigration.

This little lot, according to Professor Congdon, adds up to 12 per cent of GDP, or a staggering £170 billion per annum.

Mr Goodall and his friends will no doubt try to scare us with talk of how many jobs we would lose if we quit the EU. This implies that once free of EU domination, we would cease all trade with EU countries, but nobody is suggesting such a bizarre idea.

Just look at Norway and Switzerland, for example; they do more trade with the EU from outside than we do from the inside, with none of the costs.

They have full access to the Single Market without facing the preposterous notion of being shackled in full political union with poor countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, and they seem to be doing quite nicely out of this arrangement.

Why can’t we do the same?

HUGO MILLER

Curzon Avenue, Horsham