Millions more to come here

Sir – This week, Migration Watch, the most reliable and respected forecasting organisation to enter the referendum debate, asserted that if we remain in the EU, Britain can expect annual migration of over a quarter of a million for the next 20 years.

Responding, Britain Stronger in Europe issued the most outrageous political statement in history by telling us that the only way of controlling immigration is to vote to stay in the EU.

In view of the fact that the Conservative Government secured its mandate by promising to cut immigration to below 100,000 a year. No ifs! No buts!.....

The pressure is growing to force all Conservative members of parliament, including Robin Walker, Harriett Baldwin, Nigel Huddleston and Mark Garnier, to put country before party by making an immediate public declaration of full commitment to Vote Leave and total rejection of membership of an organisation hell bent on turning our proud nation state into the first slum of Europe.

Michael Rawlins

Worcester

Trade blocks out of date

Sir - It’s incredibly sad to see intelligent Conservatives like Harriett Baldwin and our own local MP Robin Walker supporting Remain’s ‘Britain is weak and pathetic and cannot cut it in the world’ message. It is a pessimistic and backward-looking view of Britain.

We know what Britain’s future in the EU will be part of an area tragically scarred by mass youth unemployment with the slowest level of economic growth in the world, an EU with which we have a massive annual trade deficit. The EU is the past.

Trading blocks are now out of date. Trade, and crucially its regulation, is global in the modern world – 80% of trade rules now originate globally. The EU merely passes them on. We must be where the power lies.

Harriett and Robin above all, you must know that EU leaders are determined to create a United States of Europe. At the moment, as our elected representatives, you cannot even control our borders to keep us safe, and laws you make on our behalf can be overturned by the European Court of Justice. Increasingly, you are becoming MPs of straw.

Conservatives believe there is not democratic power above the nation state. You alone must make our laws and be accountable to us for every pound which our government spends.

Above all, a proud, self-confident Britain will be more successful and richer in a globalised world because it can put our interests first, rather than wait for 27 other countries and the Commission to decide what to do. Please give up the pessimism and return to your allegiance to that positive vision.

Francis Lankester

Worcester

Time to ‘look across seas’

Sir – Most people who know me will tell you I have  wanted out off this undemocratic cesspit called the EU since 1995 when I joined UKIP.

I also voted to get out. Hopefully come June 24, Britons will at long last get independence and as Churchill said: “We will look across the seas”.

Under no circumstances in that time have I tried to indulge in silly, petty, low life letter writing to those who oppose my letters. Unlike Mr David Barlow, who was known way back in the Labour Party as a plink a plonk man  – he plays, I think, the ukulele – he tries very hard to get people to argue with him in your newspaper.

There is a very old saying that goes something like this: “Those with least to shout about shout the very loudest.”

This saying applies to him.

John Charles Butterfield

St John’s, Worcester

Leaving will solve nothing

SIR – In reply to Mrs E Young (Questions still need answers, June 20), I would submit the following: If we leave the EU, will we have to pay them less money?

Yes. How much less will depend on any replacement trade deals we make with the EU. Will we be able to refuse to take any more immigrants?

In absolute terms, yes. However, we may have to agree to continuing free movement of labour across Europe as Norway and Switzerland have to in order to enjoy tariff-free access to the single market. We have always had control of non-EU immigration and still do.

Will there then be places at local schools for our children in the school of their choice?

Providing school places is the responsibility of the UK Government, not the EU. Free movement to and from the EU plus immigration from non-EU countries to date should have been matched with an expansion of schools and housing, but hasn’t due to the failure of past governments to provide the schools needed.

Will we still have to pay immigrants’ benefits including family allowance to send home to their children if they really have any, and money to keep them until they have a job?

This was the subject of David Cameron’s “no more something for nothing” negotiation with the EU in which he got agreement that immigrants would have to contribute for four years before having access to the welfare state.

Controversial, but that is the current position if we remain. If we do take more immigrants, will they take second place in our society so that British people can get houses, etc, instead of them? Also jobs for Brits?

Private landlords are allowed to let to who they like. Social housing is shrinking due to the government policy of “right to buy”. Local councils in conjunction with housing associations tend to use a points system which is weighted in favour of local people with local family connections.

Past Labour, Tory/Lib coalition and the current Tory governments have failed to keep up with demand for social housing. Regarding jobs, it is up to the government with support from trade unions to end the practice of advertising job vacancies abroad only and undercutting wages.

What is the proportion of money given to the EU and what is being given back in grants? Of the £350 million a week, somewhere between £200m and £250m is returned in farm subsidies and rebates and other things depending on who you ask, leaving a net contribution of £100m-£150m for access to the single market. The EU may still have to be paid for access to the single market if we leave, as Norway and Switzerland have to.

Will we have more money to give to the NHS?

That depends on how we would decide to spend any net contribution, if available. The NHS is one of the cheapest health systems per head in the developed world yet like housing and schools, it is being damaged by underfunding (the austerity policy) by the government and enormous Private Finance Initiative repayments.

Will we be able to do away with food banks and poverty in Britain?

Not from leaving the EU. The Leave campaigners are fond of reminding us that we have the world’s fifth largest economy and yet we underfund the NHS, education and housing and tolerate the inequality that results in the expansion of food banks, side by side with massive tax avoidance and evasion by rich people and corporations. Nothing to do with the EU.

The honest answer to Mrs Young is that no one is sure what will happen if we leave. However, we can be sure that the problems we have in our economy and our society will not disappear by us leaving the EU.

There is no pot of gold available outside the EU to cure all our social and economic ills. Rather, they are likely to increase in the medium term with no guarantee that the British economy will ever recover outside the EU from new trade deals for a very long time.

We do know where we are now, and can build on that by playing a dominant part in the EU and by reforming it.

Peter Nielsen.

Worcester

A recipe for more conflict

SIR – The complacency shown by some readers about the continuing possibility of renewed conflict in Europe, whether or not we have a Brexit vote, is astonishing.

Does no one remember the consequences of the assassination of an Archduke in a far-off European country in 1914, the European territorial claims of a little man with a funny moustache in 1933, and the bloodbath in the former Yugoslavia after the collapse of communism?

Today, the main threat is to the Baltic States from Russia, and there are smouldering disputes between Poland and the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Greece has disputes with Turkey and Macedonia and on our own doorstep we have Ireland.

Don’t imagine we could escape getting involved, particularly if the USA decided that it was in their interests to intervene in Europe again.

Derek Fearnside

Worcester