There is nothing to celebrate about the Ceta trade deal

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Justin Trudeau, Canadian Prime Minister (AP)

Sunday Oct 30th will go down as a dark day for what remains of democracy in Europe. It was when CETA (the Canada/EU so called trade deal) was signed.

The media have said that it has been seven years in the making, and yet they only bothered to report on it in the last week or so when Belgium tried to block it at the last moment. Rather than applauding their heroic stance, and ask why, they were portrayed as trying to block this supposedly wonderful deal.

The reason why the region of Walloon, and millions of others across Europe oppose CETA is because it threaten our working conditions, food standards, environmental protections, our public services, and allow foreign corporations to sue the British governmet. In short, corporations (or those who own them) will have almost total control over our lives.

In light of these very serious concerns, you need to ask yourselves why the British public were not informed about these by our government, and our media.

Colin Crilly
Tooting

Tony Blair is speaking sense for once

The one area of agreement by both camps is that the British Public voiced clear concern that immigration needs to be controlled. David Cameron tried to negotiate a deal to better control immigration from the EU. The other 27 members of the EU gave a little but not enough. Reality is now setting in and the larger members realise that as the UK is a net contributor those that contribute will have to pay more – a distinctly unpopular scenario for those countries facing calls for reform at home. It should not be forgotten that the referendum was an advisory process.

It can be clearly argued that as only 37.5 per cent of the electorate voted to leave and several claims by the Brexiteers during the campaign have since been shown to be false that we should now approach the EU to negotiate a deal giving better control of immigration. An agreement giving the UK the control it needs to get a remain vote would benefit all members of the EU. David Cameron tried hard but the EU negotiators did not believe there would be a "no" vote.

Theresa May is under a lot of pressure from all sides including her own party to say what the government goals for Brexit are in clearer terms. As we cannot enter into negotiation until article 50 is triggered, no statement by the government will be acceptable to all and probably least of all to the remaining EU members. The conclusion of the trade deal with Canada, albeit encouraging does not bode well, a long protracted discussion seems to be inevitable. Even if the government can get agreement from the main EU trading partners. All less well-off members are likely to want their share of the contribution we are currently handing to the EU so what is there to gain.

To take up Tony Blair's suggestion to look again at the terms under which we could stay in the EU is very likely to receive a popular mandate. The problem is that too many politicians are focussed on their own careers.

Andrew Erskine
Address supplied

Fraud is hurting our small and medium sized businesses

Fraud is a serious drag on our economy and disproportionately impacts small and medium sized businesses.

The country’s SMEs are increasingly being targeted by, and falling victim to, criminals, unscrupulous employees and contractors. This may be because they are viewed as having less robust safeguards in place than larger multi-nationals.

But research we recently carried out showed that the real impact of this crime on our economy could be significantly underestimated. We found a worrying number of these scams - totalling more than £260m last year alone – were going unreported by SMEs for fear of damaging their reputation or exposing serious failings in their systems and controls.

The hitherto hidden scale of the problem is alarming and should be a wake-up call to businesses which need to ensure that the most stringent protection is in place to prevent crimes from occurring in the first place.

And when fraudulent activity is detected, it is vital that firms feel able to take action and get redress where possible. Turning a blind eye enables fraudsters to go on and target other businesses.

Craig McAdam – Head of Dispute Resolution, Slater and Gordon
London

Trump and Clinton should drop out

Why don't Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton stand aside in favour of their untainted vice-presidential running mates?

Dr John Doherty
Vienna

We should be wary of Russian advancements

It isn't simply Russia's battle hardened troops that the U.K. should be concerned about. We don't have an Army. The troops deployed in Latvia cannot expect reinforcements or relief from the U.K. if Russia advances. Michael Fallon sends our brave young men and women to certain death or capture. Let's hope the world becomes more stable over the next six months.

Mark Grey
Covent Garden

The SNP is becoming relaxed when it comes to economics

Appearing before Holyrood’s finance committee Derek Mackay, the SNP’s cabinet secretary for finance, was asked if he shared Alex Salmond’s belief in the contentious Laffer curve. He replied he hadn’t heard of such a thing – though it has dominated supply-side finance for more than 40 years and was much quoted by the former First Minister.

Mr Mackay will presumably be undismayed to hear a Strathclyde University report that leaving the UK would be far more damaging to Scotland's finance sector than Brexit. This sector contributes £8bn to our economy employing 90,000 people directly and 100,000 indirectly but it involves economic “thingies” which are clearly not his brief.

Dr John Cameron
St Andrews