DAVID CAMERON is playing to the gallery on the EU Budget. If he wants to turn the economy around, he needs to be taking action in the UK.

The EU budget for next year is £111 billion. That is the total for all 27 member states, representing more than 500 million people. The social security budget this year in the United Kingdom is £230 billion – twice the entire EU budget.

The Inland Revenue calculates that tax avoidance in the UK runs at £35 billion a year. Multinational corporations such as Starbucks, Google, Amazon and others are avoiding paying more in tax in the UK than the entire sum we spend to be members of the European Union.

EU action protects us against cyber attacks and international crime, such as human trafficking, drugs gangs and paedophile rings. It ensures us consumer protection on the goods and food we buy.

Through it we help to shape one of the largest markets for business in the world. It ensures our energy security and helps us to protect the environment. Hundreds of millions of pounds of European regional development funding is generating thousands of jobs across the Yorkshire and Humber region.

Osborne and Cameron should reform banks and deal with tax avoiders, but their backbenchers and friends in the city won’t let them. It is easier to stand on a soap box, ranting against the EU.

Christian Vassie, Blake Court, Wheldrake, York.

 

• DAVID Cameron is under much pressure to appear to have won in the negotiations on the EU budget, not to satisfy the public or the Labour opposition but his own Eurosceptic MPs.

It would be an enormous victory if the PM could reduce the budget when so many countries benefit and get more out than they put in. UKIP party members and many Tory MPs are only interested in getting out of Europe.

We are told most of us want out of Europe, but how many people would bother to vote in a referendum or in any election for that matter?

We should be told the benefits and the disadvantages of leaving the EU before any referendum is thrust upon us, especially given more information than in the election of police commissioners.

I wish our PM every success.

Dennis Barton, Woodthorpe, York.