LAST month, a photographer in China captured on film the extremely endangered ili pika, a tiny, teddy bear-like mammal that has not been spotted in more than two decades.

This week I have been on the hunt for an even rarer beast – a North-East business leader who believes that we should sever ties with the EU.

There are some of you who will accuse me of bias, of ignoring the herds of bosses who are roaming our streets, demanding we ditch Brussels quicker than a picky teenager at the Christmas dinner table.

But I have struggled to find employers who think it makes sense for us to pull out of a deal that gives British business access to 500 million consumers.

Free trade is one of the most powerful ways of boosting wealth.

The free movement of people – enshrined in the Treaty of Rome – is, however, an emotive topic. The desire to keep foreigners out of Britain is the platform upon which Ukip has risen from what David Cameron famously called in 2006 "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly" into a single-issue part that gets a disproportionate amount of media attention.

Nigel Farage wants to bring down net immigration by introducing a visa system based on the Australian points model. He is less vocal about the positive impact immigration continues to have on our economy and public services.

The NHS couldn’t operate without skilled staff from overseas. The Health Service Journal reported 5,778 nurses were recruited from overseas in the 12 months to September 2014, and the Department of Health has said foreign nurses have always made a valuable contribution to the NHS.

Most EU citizens coming to the UK are young, skilled and come to work or study. About 32 per cent of recent arrivals have university degrees compared with 21 per cent of our native population.

If we left the EU, and began to kick EU citizens out of the UK, the EU would probably retaliate tit-for-tat. Investment would fall as foreign companies that invested in the UK – such as Nissan in Sunderland and Hitachi at Newton Aycliffe – who use the North-East as a launch-pad for EU markets shifted activities across the Channel.

The EU is far from perfect. The Common Agricultural Policy for example wastes money, and the Common Fisheries Policy doesn’t take enough account of local fishermen who know what’s going on in their waters.

But staying within the union and working to make it even better is the only option. All of the alternatives are worse.

See pages 30 and 31 to read the views of local business leaders.

Follow me on Twitter @bizecho