COLIN Hingston is clearly being mischievous when he deliberately sets out to deceive asks people to believe the myth that the EU’s accounts have never been signed off because of wholesale fraud.

The selective misquoting of a list of accounting errors by the individual 28 member states picked up by the EU’s court of auditors in their 2013 report surely fools no-one apart from the more rabid lunatic fringe of UKIP supporters.

Readers can reliably check the facts and come to their own conclusions by reading the entire report online through eca.europa.eu.

To quote directly from the report: “The ECA’s estimate of the error rate is not a measure of fraud, inefficiency or waste.

It is an estimate of the money that should not have been paid out because it was not used in accordance with the applicable legislation.”

The UK government admits to more than £2billion lost to fraud from the social security budget.

That surely puts this short-sighted prejudiced and mendacious attempt at point scoring by Mr Hingson in perspective.

R Thomson, Gosport