THE Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union conference agreed to maintain its policy of British withdrawal from the EU yesterday after a motion calling for continued membership was defeated.

Delegates debated the pros and cons of membership with many lamenting the fact that PM David Cameron’s EU reforms, if successful, would see the end of the working-time directive.

Delegate Andy Moorhouse admitted the EU “has a lot of problems” but insisted: “We can’t get it reformed if we are not in it.

“The main problems in the world are global and come from within the country not the EU.”

Fellow delegate Pat Rowley said: “The EU is not an empire. Countries within the EU sit down together and they talk.”

However an impassioned plea from union president Ian Hodson saw the motion fall when he reminded delegates that leaving the EU was about asserting democratic rights.

“Our union policy is to leave the EU, it is about the fight for sovereignty. The EU entrenches a free-market capitalism,” he said.