10 REASONS WHY BRITAIN SHOULD LEAVE THE EUROPEAN UNION

1. To end the drain on the country's finances. The government puts the net 'contribution' cost of our EU membership (1999) at £8.5 billion (equal to almost 4p of income tax) and the current estimates put it at £11 billion. The pro-EU Institute of Directors calculated it as more than double - and rising. Indirect costs - complying with regulations, loss of earnings from farming, fishing, etc., raise the overall cost still further. Withdrawal from the EU would yield Britain a £25 billion Independence Dividend.

2. So that we can restore the full authority of Westminster, where the MPs we elect defend our interests, rather than accept rule from Brussels by bureaucrats we neither vote in nor have power to dismiss. Four out of five of our laws now come direct from the EU. Because EU officials and Commissioners are specifically required NOT to take account of the interests of their own country, such legislation may disregard Britain's national interest! Creating Regional Assemblies for each of Britain's Euro-Regions will cause a massive expansion in bureaucracy and administration costs and drive further wedges between Westminster, County & District Councils and the voters.

3. So that we can pursue 'British' policies for agriculture and fishing, based on optimal self sufficiency and the maximisation of our natural resources. EU 'Common' Policies for fishing & farming are expensive, wasteful, cruel, immoral as well as harmful to the environment and the developing world. British farmers are weighed down by bureaucracy and form filling and constrained by inappropriate quotas. Their 'green pound' incomes are determined by the value of sterling on the world's foreign exchanges – even if they never export!

4. The EU Single Market, with its fanciful 'level playing field' and a mass of costly regulations, sets member state against member state - whilst preventing each from capitalising on its own individual strengths. The City of London will be (deliberately) weakened by 'financial services' legislation carried by the votes of EU countries with no comparable financial sectors of their own. Similarly, our position - unique within the EU - as a world leader in the art & antiques trades, is threatened by 'harmonised' VAT.

5. Staying in the EU will mean eventually having to join the euro. As a result, control of the economy will pass to the European Central Bank, which is required to treat the entire EU area as one economy. Although exporters complain about the "strong" pound (they really mean the weak euro), the slightest weakening of sterling makes everyone nervous about inflation. When EU 'harmonisation' has raised costs and taxes here to the levels of those in France and Germany, what businesses will come and set up - or remain - here?

6. The EU is yesterday's idea. Unlike the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it is not a free trade zone but a protectionist Customs union. Even small, non-EU countries trade with the EU on better terms than those of Britain – but without the cost and loss of self-government EU membership entails. EU regulations impose extra costs on every business in the country – including the 90% that never export and those that export only to non-EU markets. Ongoing EU trade disputes with America, and Brussels' reluctance to accept WTO rulings that don't go in its favour, harm British exporters.

7. The EU is dominated by France and Germany. For forty years, their heads of government have been meeting twice yearly to set their common agenda. EU enlargement will reduce Britain's voting rights from the present 15% to less than 10%. It is dangerous and naive to think we have any real influence – let alone be able to defend our vital interests against France's unbridled hostility to America and the Anglo-Saxon 'model'.

8. The EU will oblige Britain to abandon the centuries old democratic and legal systems that have been embraced by countries throughout the world. Our legal system will be turned upside down as we go over to the Napoleonic code system: we will be deemed guilty until proved innocent, liable to virtually unlimited detention without charge (in the absence of habeas corpus) and lose the right to trial by jury. The banning of imperial measures is designed to deny British companies any 'natural' advantage when quoting for American contracts.

9. In order to retain full control over our borders and armed forces. Jurisdiction over who may enter and remain in Britain must be the sole preserve of our Westminster parliament. Britain's armed services are for defending Britain's interests, not for allowing the French to indulge their long-standing obstructive hostility to America and Nato.

10. So that we do not bind and betray future generations. Being in the EU means that all our national resources - gold reserves, North Sea Gas & Oil, fish stocks – will have to be placed at the disposal of the EU. The debts of Continental pension funds will become the debts of our children - who may not even be assured pensions of their own. The 'acquis communautaire' (= ratchet) process ensures that EU legislation is unlikely ever to be repealed or amended.