DAVID Harrison airily accuses me of “repeating a false and misleading statistic” when I state that the UK hands over £55m a day to the EU (Letters, March 27).
I strongly advise this Lib-Dem advocate of Eurofederalism to read a paper by the economist, Professor Tim Congdon: “How Much Does the European Union Cost Britain?”, published last year. The total figure is not simply net Government ‘contribution’, but also payments made by the private sector, in its own name to the EU, bringing the direct fiscal cost to the UK, as a nation, to nearly £20 billion a year, or over £50m a day, before any money is returned with strings attached.
However, the true cost of EU membership is far higher, through over-regulation (e.g. councils being fined for land-fill); resource misallocation (the Common Agricultural Policy) and lost jobs (the labour market being flooded); quite apart from waste, fraud and corruption.
COLIN HINGSTON, Southampton.
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