C. Ashton (Letters, April 28) ’refers to the 'repeatedly published.....membership fee' for belonging to the EU of £18 billion.

The actual figure for 2015 was £13 billion, but even this is misleading. The EU supports areas of the UK with large grants, keeps many farmers in business, gives huge support to research through UK universities, to the tune of £4.5 billion -the North West of England, including Cumbria, probably receives more back from the EU than it pays out.

So the UK net contribution was around £8.5 billion, or less than half the shouted figure. In context, it is about 1.1 per cent of UK public spending.

I have no problem with the second largest economy in Europe (GDP around £3,000 billion) paying this comparatively small amount to help the poorer members of the EU. Even from a hard-headed business point of view, helping them could allow us to do more trade with them - an increase in general European wealth is to the benefit of everyone.

The 'mouth-watering' EU budget amounts to just over one per cent of the EU GDP. It is administered by the 'massive' EU bureaucracy of around 38,000 people, on behalf of the 500 million people; in comparison, Lancashire County Council has a total employment of around 45,000, for about 1.5 million people.

This is the Brussels bureaucracy which 'dictates to' the UK, blindly ignoring the fact that it is subject itself to the democratically elected members of the Council and members of the European Parliament.

David Walker states we will 'face...central bank control'. The European Central Bank is part of the Euro system. We are not in that system. He says we will face '....European Court enforcement'.Which court does he mean, the European Court of Justice, or the European Court of Human Rights? The ECJ is there to make sure we all follow the same rules, to produce a level playing field - sounds reasonable to me.

The ECHR is not a part of the EU, but a separate body, overseen by the Council of Europe, formed at the instigation of Winston Churchill.

If UKIP wishes us to withdraw from that, we will be breaking a much older commitment to international agreement, and one has to ask, precisely which human rights UKIP would like to scrap.

He says we will face '...more regulation'. Which regulations would UKIP like to get rid of? The majority, agreed democratically by UK ministers, cover areas like consumer protection, worker protection and environmental protection. I'd like to keep those.

Leaving the EU will not necessarily reduce immigration. A real fact, carefully ignored by the Brexiteers, is that if we had to negotiate a new deal with the EU, we would, like Norway, have to accept free movement, make a contribution to the EU budget, and stick to much of the existing regulation; at the same time, we would have no say any longer in the budget or the ground rules. All of the costs, and none of the influence.

I shudder at the thought that the Leave campaign may succeed. Give me co-operation rather confrontation any day, where disagreements are resolved across a table, rather than a battlefield, and save us from walking off a cliff, with no guarantee of a soft landing.

Bill Sharrod

Coniston