A WORCESTER magistrate has delivered a withering attack on the EU - saying it is "failing" to keep Britain safe.

Ray Apted, a city businessman who sits on the bench, said he is fed up of scoundrels defying the law and getting away with it.

Mr Apted is the chairman and founder of Pharos Group, a privately-owned group of companies operating throughout the world as an engineering consultancy.

But he also serves as a magistrate and says he's been getting increasingly annoyed about sentencing powers not going far enough due to a lack of EU co-operation.

It comes as a leading historian from Oxford University visited Worcester to say David Cameron's claims over UK security were "dishonest".

Mr Apted, 67, took part in an EU hustings at Worcester's Cap 'N' Gown pub, where he told them of one particular drink driving case involving a UK national who had committed the same offence in Germany.

The former university lecturer said: "Europe is largely an irrelevance in terms of national security.

"Our open borders are a major concern for terrorists coming in from other countries - the EU has failed to do anything other than administrate over a problem, because it's certainly never solved one.

"I'm a magistrate and drink driving in the UK is a serious offence - in this country two offences are serious, while three are very serious.

"We recently had a case where a white male, was in your court, for a second time because he'd been drink driving.

"We looked at his record and saw he'd been caught doing the same thing in Germany two years before, but I was told to 'disregard' it as it'd breach his human rights to take that into account."

He said if all three offences had occurred in Britain he could have taken all of it into account - but because one was in Germany, he could not.

"There is no European co-operation at all - I was advised I'd be 'wasting my time'," he said.

During the debate Mr Apted, of Abberley, also claimed Britain would be "unrecognisable" in 10 years if we stayed in the EU with more immigration.

He added: "How we do expect to control our security with open borders?

"How can we control our own rule of law when we can't control who comes in and out?"

WE'RE SAFER IN THE EU, SAY LIB DEM DUO

TWO prominent Liberal Democrats have urged Worcester voters to back Remain in next week's referendum - rubbishing claims our security is at risk within the bloc.

Martin Turner, president of the party's West Midlands branch and Lee Dargue, who stood for Lib Dems in Edgbaston in the 2010 general election, also took part in the EU hustings at the Cap 'N' Gown.

They said EU co-operation across the member states helps Britain's security services, a stance rejected by historian and Eurosceptic Professor James Pettifer, from Oxford University.

Mr Turner, who tried to get elected to Dudley South at the 2015 general election, said: "We're in a better security situation because we're in NATO, we're good friends with the USA and we're in Europe," he said.

"In terms of Europe we need to be on that table - if you are at the negotiating table you will get something out of it, all of those countries in it get something from every treaty.

"If we leave, the things which are important to us will be discussed after we've left and we're looking in from the outside."

Mr Dargue added: "Is it perfect? No - but we do share information with other countries and we wouldn't be able to do much of that if we were, to quote Nigel Farage, standing 'on our own'."

Mr Pettifer insisted Britain's security forces co-operate with America more than Europe, adding: "I find it difficult to swallow David Cameron's original views when he said the EU is vital to our security when he's been running down essential parts of our military."

He said "on the whole" most of the claims from Remain about UK security benefitting from within the EU were "dishonest".