THOSE who say that when the UK joined what was then known as the European Economic Community in 1973 it was for trade only are wrong.

Fifteen years earlier the Treaty of Rome established a cross border trading group that also included the free movement of capital, goods and services and most importantly that of the labour involved.

The UK does half its trade with a bloc that has a population of 500 million people and where some two million Britons live and work.

The CBI are right to say that leaving the European Union would be bad for the jobs and pay of millions of dependant British workers.

The ‘outers’ never say how they would make up for the loss of growth and investment that leaving would entail. Their little England mentality blinds them to the economic benefits we get for being part of the single European market.

Dave Barker, Huntington, York