Leaving the EU will boost our trade, says Shropshire MP Owen Paterson

The former Environment Secretary was speaking after the campaign to keep the UK in the EU was launched yesterday ahead of a referendum on Britain's membership set to be held before 2017.

"The European Union is going to leave us," Mr Paterson said. "They are going to set up a new country, before 2025, and we are going to be left on the outside with something called associated status.

"What we are doing is missing a unique opportunity to get back to where we began, which is having a trade relationship and the closest possible co-operation across a whole range of areas, but making our own laws in our own parliament. We would get our seat back on all the world bodies that really decide regulation. We would completely regalvanise world free-trade."

Mr Paterson said the issue of immigration was central to the EU vote.

"It's a matter of huge national concern when you think we took 330,000 net last year," he said. "We do need skilled people for certain industries but we need to have control of our own immigration policy.

"It's an integral part of business because we have to have a flow of skilled people as our economy expands.

"That is clearly part of an open economy – but it's got to be managed properly and you have got to have a proper policy. Now when I talk about making our own laws and having our own parliament, I mean getting control of our immigration policy back and that is one of the things which we would do."

Mr Paterson was speaking after Boris Johnson claimed the price of quitting the EU was "lower than it's ever been" as he repeatedly refused to rule out spearheading the Out campaign.

Asked what his position on the EU is at the moment during a visit to Osaka in Japan, Mr Johnson said: "I think I am exactly where the Prime Minister is and I think, actually, a huge number of the proportion of the British public.

"We want, in an ideal world, to stay in a reformed European Union but I think the price of getting out is lower than it's ever been. It's better for us to stay in, but to stay in a reformed EU. That's where I am."

Mr Johnson has so far been careful to support Mr Cameron's position of waiting to see the outcome of the current renegotiation but many Eurosceptics believe his private views are more hardline than the prime minister's. Ukip leader Nigel Farage believes the mayor could be persuaded to lead the campaign for Britain to leave the EU. Asked if that was a possibility, Mr Johnson said: "You are now mounting hypothesis upon hypothesis."

Mr Cameron will meetEuropean Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on Thursday to discuss progress over talks which have been taking place since June on the UK's demands for reform.