Jobs threat in pro-brexit passport-making town

Jobs in a Brexit-backing area will be put at risk by a decision to award a contract to produce British passports to a Franco-dutch firm, a former Tory Cabinet minister warned. Lord Forsyth described the decision to hand the 11-year contract to Gemalto ahead of De La Rue, which is based in Gateshead, as “extraordinary”.

SIR – The EU’S Brexit negotiators seem to be dragging out the process. They are still not prepared to discuss trade terms after the transition period.

However, we are told that both sides have signed up to the principle that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Payment into the EU budget beyond March 2019, when we become a sovereign nation, is surely covered by that principle.

I assume that even Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, will not make these payments until everything else is agreed. If the pundits are right and negotiations go into the transition period or beyond, the EU will have to manage without our contribution in that period. Does the EU know this? Robert Mansfield

Bramhope, West Yorkshire

SIR – Brexit negotiations have become a fiasco. In the transition settlement, Britain has agreed not to limit freedom of movement. The fishing industry has been sold down the river. Now we find that passports are to be printed by a Franco-dutch company. Theresa May’s idea of free trade is to let the EU be free to do as it wishes and we will do as the EU tells us. British-based firms are not allowed to print French passports, so how is that free trade? Frederick Hill

Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

SIR – Professor Eric Goodyer (Letters, March 21) did some number-crunching on fisheries. Here are some more numbers with a different slant.

The North-east Atlantic Fishing Area, as the EU calls it, is mainly around Iceland, Norway, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, the total catch in this area being some 5.6 million tons in 2016.

The UK is allowed only 14 per cent (700,000 tons) of this under EU rules and Ireland only 4.6 per cent (230,000 tons). Iceland and Norway – not in the EU and so not subject to quotas – had catches of 1,306,000 and 2,367,000 tons. The figures speak for themselves.

Continental countries have a much bigger appetite for fish than does Britain. So the idea of the EU not buying our fish after Brexit, even at a higher price, sounds very far fetched. Edmund Mahony

Brighton, East Sussex

SIR – My friend Lord Ryder of Wensum (Letters, March 23) overlooks a simple truth: the need for fairness for free trade to be advantageous.

He may not appreciate that Cobden and Bright recognised this when devising, along with Michel Chevalier, the first ever free-trade treaty. By incorporating an extensive schedule of tariffs, the French Commercial Treaty of 1860 created a fair trading platform for both countries.

I will happily swap an imperfect free-trade policy in the national interest with Lord Ryder’s determination as chief whip to ram through the unacceptable Maastricht Treaty at the time of our now-justified rebellion against this creation of European government in the Nineties. Sir William Cash MP (Con)

London SW1