SIR – While Gordon Brown has continued to dither about a possible reduction in stamp duty to help the hard-pressed property market, his Government has continued to roll out the so-called Home Information Packs (HIPs) which add to the cost as well as the bureaucracy of moving house.

A number of constituents have written recently asking what I can do “to stop the EU imposing this burden upon us”. The answer is very simple. Like most of the Euro-myths peddled by the usual suspects this has not come from the EU.

The idea of HIPs was born and bred in Downing Street as yet another stealth tax for a free-spending cashstrapped Government. No other EU country has been daft enough to introduce them, and the next Government should make it a priority to scrap them.

PHILIP BUSHILL-MATTHEWS

MEP