CPS Board member Lord Flight and several recent authors including Andrea Leadsom MP, Dominic Raab MP, Karen Bradley MP, Harriett Baldwin MP and Chris Heaton-Harris MP signed a letter to The Telegraph regarding the threat to the City of London from EU measures.
SIR – European Union proposals pose a grave threat to Britain’s financial services industry, which employs nearly two million people, accounts for 10 per cent of GDP, and generates over £50 billion in tax receipts annually.
Although there have undoubtedly been regulatory failures in recent years, future policy should primarily be decided by Britain, not the EU.
There are nearly 50 proposals under consideration by the EU. The most troubling include a unilateral, EU-wide financial transactions tax which would inflict enormous damage on Britain’s economic interests, a ban on some short-selling and a European Central Bank proposal that transactions on euro-denominated financial products are only cleared in the eurozone.
From 2014, Britain will have only 12 per cent of the votes in the Council of Ministers and 10 per cent in the European Parliament, yet it accounts for 36 per cent of the EU’s wholesale finance industry and enjoys a 61 per cent share of the EU’s net exports of international transactions in financial services.
It is imperative that the Government fights our corner by arguing either for a new EU protocol or a Britain-specific legal safeguard. Without strong action, the present drift seriously threatens both British jobs and Exchequer revenues.
To see the full list of signatures, visit The Telegraph’s Letters page.
Date Added: Thursday 8th December 2011
