I am most surprised that Andy Newman, the Labour candidate for Chippenham, is only using the figures drawn up by one group of businesspeople rather than taking a broad study for and against our continued membership of the EU.

There are now numerous group and special interests for and against continued membership and I would have thought that a prospective parliamentary candidate would consider them all before writing such a letter. For example, there is Business for New Europe, which isn’t really a business at all but a pressure group which wrote to the USA and Japan asking for letters of support for our continued membership, along with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and South Africa for similar letters but never got them because those countries possibly didn’t feel it right to intervene in other countries’ business.

Readers may not be aware that since the present government came to power in 2010 the EU has issued 3,589 regulations and directives that have passed into UK law and only last week James Dyson had to lodge an appeal over new EU labelling regulations. Supporters of the euro, including the ‘big beasts’ (their own description) of the Tory Party, Labour and Lib/Dem were telling us that if we didn’t join the euro we would lose three million jobs. We didn’t and should be grateful to Gordon Brown for keeping us out of that disaster.

The very same people are now saying if we leave the EU “we will lose three million jobs”. However, leading economists in a debate mentioned in The Economist say that six and a half million jobs in Europe rely on the UK directly and don’t believe Europe would erect trade barriers as they would hurt Europe more than the UK.

Stuart Eels, John Aubrey Close, Yatton Keynell.