I gladly support Christian Vassie (Letters, November 23) in his plea to leave EU laws alone, or at least be very wary about any purge lest the supposed remedy be worse than the disease.

EU bureaucracy has been a boring trope for years. But those who seem convinced the EU has a monopoly of silliness are either being wilfully selective for ideological purposes or overlook the UK variety.

As a solicitor in general practice in York for many years I frequently encountered the latter.

We specialise in ‘gold plating’ EU regulations and converting them into a more burdensome UK version.

An EU directive that the walls of slaughterhouses be ‘washable’, for example, morphed into a requirement that they be clad in stainless steel. A

couple of pages of guidance to French farmers as to how they should complete their IACS forms, became 83 in the UK.

Even in areas where ‘Europe’ is hardly engaged, we manage to create our own administrative quagmires, as witness the world’s most complex and impenetrable tax arrangements and a criminal justice system that has been slowly degenerating into chaos for years.

Our parliamentary draftsmen likewise seem to revel in unnecessary and whimsical nit-picking.

My all-time favourite is: S.10 (3) of the Finance (No 2) Act 1992: “This section shall apply in relation to aircraft as it applies in relation to vehicles or vessels, but the power to stop and search in sub-section (1) shall not be available in respect of aircraft which are airborne.”

Really?

Tony Lawton, Skelton, York