[Margaret Pilkington]

Rena, I cannot answer this question that you pose, but what i can tell you is that when tenders were being sought for rolling stock for the railways Siemens(Germany) and Bombardier(Derby UK)both submitted their tenders.......who do you think was awarded the contract?
It wasn't the Derby firm.....this was because Siemens got some form of sunsidies from their government to make their tender more attractive(the playing field was tilted to make the ball roll their way)........so being in the EU did not help us there.

I do believe that if our products are good enough then there will be markets outside of the EU for them....and as it stands we currently buy far more from the EU than they buy from us.
The current deal for the wings of the Airbus only gives these plants about 2 years of guaranteed work...so after that they would be looking for something else anyway.

If the government can squander 9 million on a propaganda leaflet that isn't worth a light then maybe they should be looking at backing some of the industries in this country...but that would take some working at....some proactive thinking..... and I can't really see many thinkers in the current set up.....they all seem to want to take the line of least resistance.