I READ with incredulity the letter published in The Press on May 14 which claimed that migrants pay in more than they take out - all on the basis of an estimate that, in 2013/14 EU migrants paid £2.5bn more tax than they took out in tax credits and child benefits. So what?

Apart from the fact that this estimate could be very inaccurate due to the fact that it has since been admitted that there are far more migrants in the UK than were being recognised in past calculations, it is only a small part of the total picture.

Does the writer think that these people are alien creatures who, unlike all the rest of us, do not make use of hospitals, ambulances, schools, housing, child care, adult care, police, the court system and prisons?

Until you take into account the massive cost of providing all these services you have not even begun to understand the effect on the UK economy.

I just hope that most people can see beyond the political spin being used in putting out these misleading figures and can think for themselves.

The only way in which we can have any real control is to vote to leave the EU.

Forget all the choreographed economic forecasts being fed to us.

They depend on the assumptions fed in and come from people and organisations, many of whom have had a poor forecasting record in recent years.

Some even strongly advocated that the UK should join the Euro!

In addition, however accurate or inaccurate, they are all forecasts of short term effects – one or two years.

We are looking at a vote for what is best for the UK over the next fifty years.

That is a vote to leave.

J M Reid,

Moor Lane, Strensall, York

READING the letter ‘Vegan benefits are just a knockout’ (May 25), I wonder how my father - who started working down the mines aged 14, in seams where the men could not stand up, working long shifts - managed to do his work, dig his allotment and garden and in retirement help my uncle by carrying big baskets of eggs to my uncle’s customers in the village?

Guess what, my father ate meat, as did many many hard-working men.

If anyone wants to be a vegan then fair enough, but I don’t believe it makes them any stronger or fitter than someone who is not.

Maureen Robinson, Broadway, York