Claims that skyrocketing national debt is due to UK’s membership of EU just don’t stack up

BOB Granville (Write Back, August 27) accuses myself and Beryl Wall (Write Back, August 21) of being “ill-informed, spin-doctoring Remoaners”.

Bob implies our skyrocketing national debt of close to £2trn is due to our EU membership over the last 10 years. In fact, the ONS data which he references suggests our membership over this period cost us about £81bn net, so the source of the remaining £1.92trn debt is to be found elsewhere.

Part of this debt is due to the collapse of the banking system in 2008, which Bob ignores, with massive amounts of public money used to prevent another Great Depression occurring. Bob also says “trading with the EU is costing us £79bn a year”; this is not a fee we pay to the EU for membership, but is our trade deficit with the EU.

If we do not reduce our consumption, this deficit will grow when we end our EU membership due to increased expenses of trade as a third country.

In 2017 our export trade of goods to the EU was about £150bn, with a similar amount of trade outside the EU.

We import much more stuff from the EU than from outside it. This reduces transport costs and environmental impact, but it means our balance of trade with the EU is less in our favour than for the trade outside the EU.

This would change if we started importing more from outside the EU, then we would not retain the positive balance of trade and the impact of transportation would be worse.

Of course, Bob, I do not ignore the corruption in the EU nor our own home-grown scandals. These should all be rigorously exposed and investigated.

But to do this, we have to be members to get a say in the reform of the system.

NICK CANNING Coleraine, Co Londonderry