I READ Mr L Gates’ letters printed in your correspondence column and have a few comments to make on his statements.

The standard position of all EU enthusiasts is to claim economic benefits from our membership of the EU.

The ‘Treaty of Rome’ of 1956 (available through the local library) shows that the creation of the European Union was a federal project and not about trade.

Similarly a reading of the research paper ‘UK Jobs dependant on the EU’ by Brian Andy, Ian Begg and Dermot Hodson, of South Bank University, does not back up the claims that three million jobs depend on EU membership.

The study was produced by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) in 2000.

The director of NIESR Dr Martin Weale discredited the pro-EU misuse of the study as ‘pure Goebbels’. He added: “In the many years of academic research I cannot recall such a wilful distortion of the facts.”

Since then EU enthusiasts have blatantly promoted the lie that three million jobs depend on our EU membership.

Professor Begg LSE, a co-author of the study, when interviewed in 2013, (available on line) stated: “It’s always been a bit of a false perspective to say that three million jobs would be lost.”

On Mr Gates’ comment that the UKIP MEPs did not vote to abolish the Strasbourg Parliament I would point out that its existence was established by treaty in 1992 and cannot be voted out of existence by MEPs.

The main UKIP policy is that we have to control our own borders in order to prevent massive over immigration. This can only be done by leaving the EU.

Mr L Gates claims that unrestricted immigration of agricultural workers keeps the price of food down.

The price of food is high because of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which featherbeds the EU farmers.

I do not doubt that Mr Gates is quoting in good faith from a party briefing document.

However, if one seeks to influence the public attitudes only the true facts will do.

William McCabe, Mornington Close, Andover