YP Letters: Major companies’ relocation could hit communities hard

EVERY day there are reports of major companies planning to reduce jobs or relocate completely into the European Single Market in the event of Brexit, with or without a deal. Smaller businesses in those communities such as component suppliers, cafes, food shops, etc, will also be hard hit when earning power is removed by the loss of several hundred well paid jobs. I fear for those communities and the greater deprivation which will ensue.

We know only too well in South Yorkshire the effect of the loss of jobs in steel, mining and engineering in the 1980s.

It was money from the EU Regional and Social Funds which helped the area to recover. No such help will be forthcoming from the EU if we pull out and cause job losses by our own actions.

Money saved from no longer paying into EU funds is highly unlikely to be used by our present Government to help poorer areas.

Indeed they have actively taken money away for the last eight years and favoured tax cuts to the wealthy.

From: Keith Punshon, Willow Bridge Lane, Dalton, Thirsk.

MINISTERS who asked to be trusted over Nissan now threaten Brexit-voting Sunderland with a withdrawal of support for the community. After Theresa May allegedly offered sweeteners to Labour MPs to get them to vote for her deal through investment in their struggling communities, now we have Remainers doing the opposite and threatening Leavers.

Nissan was promised £60m support for training and skills investment in Sunderland, and now Nissan has withdrawn their commitment to build new models there, we see a threat that the money will stop.

I would have thought that maintaining skills and investing in a community with more than its fair share of problems would be a good investment. It would also be good for Sunderland and other Leave-voting areas if they were permitted to make their own trade deals.

From: David Craggs, Shaftongate, Goldthorpe.

ONE word that has been thrown out ad nauseam by Brexiteers at Remainers is ‘scaremongering’. So are the problems already being created by the Irish border, the recent announcement by Nissan at Sunderland, and the stockpiling of food, which we are told is already taking place, examples of this supposedly non-existent scaremongering?