No thanks to the euro!

JUST one in five people in Hampshire want Britain to scrap the pound in favour of the euro, a Daily Echo survey has revealed.

In the biggest survey of opinion in the county, we asked 1,000 residents whether the government should take the country into the single European currency.

The message to Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Cabinet was clear.

Only 21 per cent gave their backing to the euro while a massive 71 per cent were opposed. The remaining eight per cent had yet to make up their mind.

The results come on the day when Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown was expected to deliver his verdict to Parliament that Britain is not yet ready to join the euro, ruling out hopes of an early referendum.

Following two and a half hours of talks at a special Cabinet meeting in Downing Street last week, Mr Brown declared that the decision on whether to recommend membership had been taken on the basis of the "national economic interest".

His comments are widely seen as confirmation that he will say the conditions are not yet right for Britain to join when he announces the Treasury's assessment of the five economic tests in the Commons today.

"We are all resolved that the decision on the euro must be taken in the national economic interest and it will be the national economic interest that will be the determining factor," Mr Brown said last week.

"We are all resolved that nothing must be done that will put the stability of the British economy at risk."

Pro-euro ministers - including Prime Minister Tony Blair himself - were thought to have accepted that they could not challenge Mr Brown's verdict on the five tests.

However, they were anxious to leave open the possibility of a referendum on the joining the euro before the next general election, and to put in place a strategy for meeting the tests.

Meanwhile, in Hampshire, many of those surveyed as part of the Daily Echo's poll wanted an honest public debate on the euro before the government holds its promised referendum on the issue.

People in Eastleigh were the strongest anti-euro voice, with 79 per cent voting against.

That compared to 78 per cent in Fareham, 73 per cent in Winchester and 70 per cent in Southampton.

In the New Forest, residents in Lymington seemed the most confused, with 26 per cent yet to decide which way they would vote while 58 per cent were anti-euro and 16 per cent in favour.

The chancellor confirmed that he would be publishing the 1,800 pages of the Treasury's 18 background studies, laboriously waded through by ministers, at 9am today.

The final assessment document, which runs to another 250 pages, will then be released after he has delivered his statement this afternoon.

Mr Brown said that he hoped it would lead to an "open and widespread" debate in the country at large.

FOR: Mark Oaten MP, Winchester, Liberal Democrat

IT comes as no surprise to me that 71 per cent of Hampshire residents are against joining the euro.

People are rightly sceptical - the layers of red tape coming from Brussels need to be removed, and quickly. When you add the anti-euro scaremongering into the mix, it wouldn't surprise me if people started to confuse Brussels with Transylvania.

So, what do we really want from Europe? Two answers always prevail - less bureaucracy and more jobs.

But remaining on the periphery of the EU we are impotent to affect any change in these areas.

France and Germany will continue to pull the purse-strings in Brussels unless we join them in the decision making process - with Britain at the heart of Europe. With ten new countries soon to join, there is a real chance to shake things up for the better. Europe definitely needs to be reformed - but from the inside out.

Let's look at the facts. Every day we remain out of the euro we are losing out. Inward investment into the UK has fallen a whopping 30 per cent since the euro began - and that is no coincidence. Businesses prefer to do deals where the currency is stable.

Finally, it is you and me that will benefit. Exploitative businesses will not be able to charge us one price and consumers in Europe another.

This will drive down prices and leave us with more change in our pockets - dare I say, enough even for a holiday in Europe.

I am no apologist for the EU as it currently exists, but we need to get out of the isolationist, ivory tower mentality which we are so good at, and accept that we can't always do things alone. Let's get in on the act.

AGAINST: Desmond Swayne, MP New Forest West, Conservative

I HAVE no doubt that joining the euro would make us much poorer. The UK economy is very different from the rest of Europe.

We export oil, we do most of our trade with the rest of the world and, unlike Europeans, most of our homeowners have variable rate mortgages.

For all these reasons we have a business cycle that is quite different from the rest of Europe.

So, to have to share the interest rate set in Frankfurt to suit Europe as a whole would always put us at a disadvantage.

Even Germany, which does not share our differences with European economies, is suffering terribly from the current euro interest rate. We would be daft to join it.

I do not, however, spend time worrying about the euro because we are protected from it by the good sense of the British people in a referendum.

The real danger comes from the European Constitution which the government is refusing to put to a referendum.

It will ensure that we are governed by people whom we do not elect and whom we cannot remove.

Currently, the EU has powers only because member states agree unanimously to give it those powers by treaty.

Under the constitution the relationship could not be more utterly different: The United States of Europe will allow the member states to exist and enjoy certain powers which, in time, it may decide to take from us.

If we sign up to this constitution the UK as a self-governing nation will have ceased to exist.