LANCASHIRE continues to lose jobs in manufacturing at a worrying rate. And the area is not alone -- more than 80,000 manufacturing jobs have disappeared across Britain in the last year.

Does this matter, some ask, when more jobs are being created in services than are disappearing in manufacturing? Well, yes, it does. Manufacturing is still the backbone of our economy. We must create wealth before we can spend it.

The picture is not the same elsewhere in Europe. While manufacturing employment has dropped by two per cent here since last summer, it has risen by 0.4 per cent in the 11 EU countries which make up the euro currency zone.

Most North West industrialists I speak to blame the job losses on an over-valued pound, which is pricing them out of vital European markets -- 60 per cent of our manufacturing exports go to euro-zone countries. The volatile pound against the euro also makes business planning difficult and risky.

That is why I think we should join the euro -- but not yet.

If we entered at the pound's present exchange rate, we would merely compound our problems. But ruling out the single currency forever would be equally disastrous. More and more jobs in manufacturing areas like Lancashire would be put in jeopardy -- a price certainly not worth paying.

The only realistic way forward is to say yes to the euro, but join only when the economic conditions -- and especially the pound's exchange rate -- are right.

GARY TITLEY, Labour MEP for the North West, Spring Lane, Radcliffe.