SIR – With Christmas just around the corner, we thought we would share the recent good cheer delivered to the region by the EU.

Universities and businesses across the region, and indeed, from across the UK, can now apply for £12.5 billion worth of European funding – part of the EU’s latestresearch and innovation programme which will release more than £65 billion over the next seven years.

British universities and businesses have previously benefitted from substantial amounts of EU funding to help projects get off the ground. In total, the UK has received almost £4 billion of EU research funding since 2007 and in Yorkshire alone, the region’s universities have received more than £300m.

In the knowledge that the current EU research and innovation programme has, over the last five years, provided finance equal to nearly ten per cent of the UK’s national science budget, we would urge those Christmas Scrooge’s throwing insults at the EU to look again at the hard facts about the value – and money – the EU brings to this region.

Edward McMillan-Scott MEP and Rebecca Taylor MEP, Liberal Democrat Members of the European Parliament, Yorkshire & Humber