MANY readers will share Barbara Woodley’s dismay (Letters, January 27) at the sale to the highest international bidders over the last 40 years of great national assets.

They include the National Coal Board, British Steel, British Rail, the National Electricity Board, the municipally owned water and gas industries, the Post Office, and soon - as the Government continues to pursue this policy - our National Health Service.

This has been purely British initiative. There are no European Union regulations requiring states to sell state-owned assets, or to stop them preventing their privately owned companies from selling out to foreign companies.

The Great British Sell-Off is the path that resolutely independent British governments have chosen in order to bolster the City of London as the major financial centre in Europe, and to fund low levels of corporation tax.

For the same reason they have emasculated with vetoes regular attempts by the EU Commission to control what the British and European public perceive to be the harmful excesses of international finance.

In the matter of running our economy the British Government is all powerful, and the influence and input of the European Union is minimal.

Maurice Vassie, Cartmans Cottage, Deighton, York