Remain vote '˜could bring thousands of jobs'

Manufacturing, retail and banking and business services could be the areas to see the biggest growth according to the CBI.

Beckie Hart, CBI Yorkshire and Humber director, said: “The UK’s membership of the European Union has been of enormous benefit to Yorkshire and the Humber for over 40 years. Some of the key sectors that lie at the heart of communities across the region, from manufacturing to retail, rely on our membership of the single market.

“Virtually every economist agrees that leaving the EU would likely cause an economic shock, damaging Yorkshire and the Humber’s prospects. We’d not only put a dent in what we have now, we’d also miss out on thousands of jobs in the near future, as a result of losing access to the single market, pulling the rug from under our local economy.”

A leading cancer expert has also warned of the consequences of leaving the EU.

Professor Sir Alex Markham, from the University of Leeds and a former chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: “There are many current EU cancer initiatives that we are a part of as a nation, which are producing very exciting research - that we would lose if we were no longer a member of the EU.”

He added: “I focus very much on cancer but all of my colleagues in other disease areas would say the same. I’m not really looking forward to putting medical research back together if we vote to leave Europe on Thursday.”