I FEEL Bill Morehead's claim that the EU Treaty is mainly a tidying-up exercise puts him in the same league as Gordon Brown and Tony Blair in the falsehood stakes.

EU leaders are jubilant that they have managed to resurrect the old constitution with its main aims intact. The disingenuous promise of a referendum by Mr Blair to take the steam out of the European issue in the 2005 General Election was campaigned on as part of the election manifesto and to wriggle out of it shows contempt for the voting public.

Mr Morehead's plea for a detailed examination of the treaty, alias constitution, is not shared by other pro-Europeans, and much of the media, who know the more information the public has, the more it will realise how the EU constantly extends its own powers at the expense of those of the British.

Surely it is in everyone's interests that a suitable formulae for European co-operation is devised over time to approval by all, rather than this frantic, furtive rush for federalism which I think will cause many problems for Europe in the future.

John Heslop, Gainford, near Darlington.