Bill Cash in The Times writes: "Sir, In your leading article (“A missed opportunity”, July 9), regarding the Government’s White Paper on the reform of financial markets, you rightly criticise the Government on “a failure of leadership”.

"You give three reasons. There is also a fourth, which is that the whole framework for financial regulation is being driven by the overarching jurisdiction of the European Union that will hand over the ultimate decisions to majority voting and the lethal use of co-decision and, finally, the European Court of Justice.

"This will undermine the City of London in favour of other European financial centres. Furthermore, all this will do nothing to help the global marketplace, given the failures of European laws and regulations such as the Stability and Growth Pact and the economic implosion of the eurozone with massive unemployment and market distortions.

"Alistair Darling replied to me and several other Members of Parliament on his statement, supinely conceding that we are governed by European directives, “whether we like it or not”. National supervision is a euphemism. In fact, there will be European control and jurisdiction and the City of London will be the loser, as will the UK economy as a whole."