HOW ironic that Richard Denton-White complains about the Leave campaign telling lies, and then suggests that the EU protects our rights to maternity leave.

According to the OECD Family Database, in the UK, the length of paid maternity leave is due is more than any other country in the EU. In some cases – Austria, France, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Sweden – it is at least double.

The same is true for compensation for maternity leave. In the UK, the 2014 maternity payment was 90% of full pay for six weeks, followed by 33 weeks at a maximum of £140.

In Ireland, only the first 26 weeks are paid at a maximum of £170 per week. A woman earning £25k in the UK would receive £7,210, in Ireland, £4420, in Germany, £6,730.

Mr Denton-White assures us that no sane, informed or sensible voter will vote for Brexit.

Well, I consider myself sane and well informed.

I have a master’s degree in business, I have worked in 17 countries and lived in two. I work for a multinational business and lead a team based in Bangalore, Bangkok and the US.

And I am voting out, not because of the distraction of immigration, but because of the simple fact that the world’s fastest growing economies are outside of the EU.

Youth unemployment in Greece is 49%. In Spain, 45%. In Italy, 39%. In Portugal, 30%. In France, 25%. In Ireland, 20%.

Pay attention, young people: Mr Denton-White’s brand of sanity demands that you to vote to remain in a bloc that sees somewhere between one in five and one in two of you out of work.

Economic growth in Britain last year was 1.1%. In France, it was 0.8%. In Netherlands, 0.9%, in Spain, 0.5%. In Denmark, 0.4%. Portugal was in negative figures. So was Italy. So was Greece.

Mr Denton-White’s brand of sanity demands that we vote to be more like this countries and less like India, with 7%, or Brazil, with 3.8%, or Russia, with 2.8% (and this despite oil price collapses and sanctions).

Whether Mr Denton White and others like him choose to accept it, the only reason that the EU figures on growth and employment look even remotely as good as ours is because of Germany, which, with a 4.8% unemployment rate, and economic growth a little better than ours (1.5%), artificially skews the figures.

Germany is also a threat to us. In normal circumstances, exchange rates offset competitive advantage. Germany gets good at making widgets, and their currency becomes more expensive to buy, so the price of their widgets is greater. In the Eurozone, there are no internal exchange rates, meaning that German products appear artificially cheap. Germany wins on competitiveness, and other EU countries are compensated with high unemployment.

If that is what you want, then vote Remain.

Many of us in the leave camp would like to be free to negotiate our own trade deals with high growth countries such as China, India and Brazil. We are looking to the future, not clinging to a failing political system that creates unemployment, economic stagnation and civil unrest.

James Young

St Annes Road

Weymouth