IT is depressing for those concerned about the integrity of public debate that Vote Leave, in its first statement after being named as the official Leave campaign for the EU referendum, chose to repeat the discredited claim that we send £350m to Brussels every week, which it says it wants to spend on priorities like the NHS.

As has been pointed out many times, £350m a week (equivalent to £18.2bn a year) is a gross figure which does not take account of the UK rebate – which is never sent to Brussels in the first place – or of money returned for public spending on items such as farm support and regional development.

The Treasury and Office for Budget Responsibility put our actual net contribution at £8.5bn in 2015. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) puts it at £9.9bn (for 2014) and the European Commission, which also takes account of EU spending on the UK private sector, at £5.7bn (also for 2014).

These figures are the maximum that would be available for Leave campaigners to spend on their priorities if their campaign was successful, and even these amounts takes no account of any contribution we would likely have to pay for continuing access to the single market (as Norway does, for example) or any losses resulting from damage to our economy.

Of course, we could free resources by stopping spending on farm support or regional development, but I don’t suppose Brexiters will try selling that idea to farmers or the people of the North East.

Nor do the Vote Leave figures even acknowledge that there are huge economic benefits from our membership, which the CBI recently put at £73bn-£91bn annually – roughly 10 times our contribution – based on the body of academic evidence.

PETER MORRIS,

Secretary (North-East),

European Movement UK