Business leaders launch Business for Britain backing the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign
“THE argument is not about cost, it’s about how and where that money comes back and who decided on it,” said Carl Chambers, the regional chairman for Business for Britain, the business arm of the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign.
Mr Chambers, a non-executive director of Leeds Teaching Hospitals, is leading the charge in the region as 62 business leaders launch Business for Britain Yorkshire, which supports an exit by Britain from the European Union.
The organisation said that since the UK joined the EU in 1975, Yorkshire and the Humber has paid £27.7bn to the EU (to put this in context, the NHS costs over £120bn a year, whilst a replacement Trident programme is estimated at £20bn).
But the organisation’s concerns are largely with where the money is spent, Mr Chambers admitted that the EU does plough back money into the UK, but he said: “The money that comes back to us, we don’t decide how it gets spent, the structural funds and where it goes is decided by the EU. It does come back, but we think that the people who put it in decide where it’s best spent.
“Like the devolution that is going on within the Northern Powerhouse, it’s best if the spending power is decided in that area, they are the people that know what issues are important.
Business for Britain quoted a YouGov poll in which 145 Yorkshire smaller businesses were surveyed (2101 business across the UK were questioned). 40% or those said that they think that the EU is making it harder for their business to employ people.
Mr Chambers said: “Each business has a different reason for saying that, and one of the reasons is that if you’re a small business, most will not trade with Europe but will have to comply with regulations the the EU has set. Some rules are common sense, whereas others are onerous for small businesses.”
Despite the yawning skills gaps in the UK, from the construction sector to the digital industries, Mr Chambers said that attempting to bridge these gaps with talent from the EU was not working. He said: “Business would accept you need to recruit elsewhere if you can’t recruit in UK – what happens with unrestricted movement is that it becomes difficult to recruit a doctor from India or an engineer from South Africa, it lowers the skill base overall.
“The larger and more multinational the company is, the more likely they are to want to stay in – they are very good lobbyists for changes that suit them.”
Mr Chambers said: “The origin of Business for Britain is that it was set up on the basis of forcing fundamental change to our relationship with the EU or we would leave. Business leaders would prefer staying in the EU but these fundamental changes are not happening and are not going to happen.
“Why make it [centralisation of governing powers] even worse by adding Brussels on top of Westminster. Westminster MPs are accountable directly, whereas the EU is largely undemocratic.
“We’re trying to pass back powers closer to where they will be effective.”
