FORMER Labour MP Nigel Griffiths and former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars united yesterday to call for a Leave vote in the EU referendum.

At the launch of the Scottish Leave campaign in Edinburgh Mr Griffiths warned that “the EU is failing to reconnect with millions of voters who want to keep the £19 billion we give the EU every year and spend it here on our priorities like steel, fishing and manufacturing.”

He warned that “free movement of labour rules are allowing unscrupulous employers to import cheap foreign labour and force down UK wage rates,” adding that the Bank of Scotland produced a report last year showing that wages had dropped 2 per cent as a result.

Left-wing independence campaigner Mr Sillars warned that leaked TTIP documents had particular implications for Scotland. He said “Scotland will not be able to claim exemption from TTIP rules because, as a sub-state devolved administration, we will be subject to them. This rule has serious implications for the NHS and Scottish Water in particular. TTIP opens governments and, crucially, devolved administrations to legal challenges.”

He said that the NHS in Scotland and publicly owned water are “vulnerable targets” because “major US health corporations will be able to argue that, since parts of the NHS have been privatised in England, the privatisation principle has been employed at the state level, therefore Scotland, at the sub-state level, cannot claim exemption from US companies entering this public service.”