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National Referendum on the European Union

I will make a little progress, then I will be happy to give way. Let me share with the House the description of Europe's economic importance to Britain given to me in a recent parliamentary answer by none other than the Foreign Secretary:"““European markets account for half of the UK's overall trade and foreign investments and as a result, around 3.5 million jobs in the UK are linked to the export of goods and services to the EU.””" He states that those markets provide"““the world's most important trading zone, generating total GDP close to £10 billion in 2010””.—[Official Report, 12 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 256W.]" In what I hope was a drafting error rather than an economic forecast, he of course got the size of Europe's GDP wrong by a factor of 1,000. It actually had a GDP close to £10 trillion in 2010. The importance of the European economy to the British economy is none the less clear.