Haemorrhaging our hard-earned taxes to the EU (From Congleton Guardian)

Haemorrhaging our hard-earned taxes to the EU

11:18am Friday 17th October 2008

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What would you like your hard-earned taxes spent on – one million hip replacement operations, 220,000 more nurses, 182,000 more teachers, 162,000 more police officers or an extra £8 a week on the basic state pension?

According to the present Government’s own figures, the UK’s direct annual contribution to the EU budget was a staggering £4.7 billion last year – enough to pay for a vast increase in NHS and other services.

Instead, this incredible sum has been spent on EU bureaucracy and corruption – while the NHS continues to suffer cuts and the threat of privatisation initiatives forced on us by European directives.

Increasing privatisation of public services through Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs), the ending of final salary pension schemes, and the run down of British manufacturing industries have all been affected by the dead hand of the EU.

Domestic intervention in UK industry and growth in truly public services are both prohibited by existing EU treaties and directives.

For example, the closure of Peugeot’s Coventry plant was engineered by the EU, as it subsidised a new plant in Slovakia.

The EU refused permission for the UK Government to invest in the plant here.

Although rejected by the voting public in France, Holland and Ireland, the EU constitution is being brought into forces by stealth.

This will intensify the EU’s liberalising, financially restrictive agenda, and bring further rounds of reductions in public spending.

Labour migration cannot be controlled under the EU’s principle of “Freedom of Movement”.

This creates skills shortages and weakens the trade union movement in Eastern Europe, whilst bringing pressure on union organisation, and pay and conditions in Britain.

The huge potential flow of immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria must be prevented.

Only a UK government free of EU interference can impose permanent control.

Britain’s accumulated manufacturing trade deficit with the EU is more than £220 billion.

All the ‘Single Market’ has really achieved has been the export of UK workers’ jobs – leading to unemployment at home.

This massive trade deficit gives the lie to the claim that three million jobs are dependent on EU membership.

The EU’s unelected institutions now decide more than half of the UK’s laws.

Elected by nobody and, in practice, responsible to nobody, the EU Commission takes a net contribution of £115 million per week from the UK taxpayer.

However, more than 80 per cent of its expenditure is not properly audited.

This does not include the cost to British pockets of higher food prices, or the huge burden of regulation on 100 per cent of our economy when only ten per cent of the UK Gross Domestic Product is exported to the EU.

Most people think that the European Union is an expensive waste of time and resources.

But I personally believe that it is worse than that.

The meddling of EU bureaucrats in all aspects of our national life is now having a direct and devastating effect on people’s daily lives.

The truth is that there is no point complaining about many of the issues facing the United Kingdom today unless we address the real problem – the UK’s disastrous membership of the European Union.

We would all be better off out, and able to spend our money on the things we, rather than unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, decide are important.

Ann Winterton, MP for Congleton

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