European Union (Implications of Withdrawal) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am particularly unwilling to get into a contention with noble Lords on aid because I suspect that there is no need for one, but I just give a very quick illustration of the use of European aid. We have used some of our aid, together with other Europeans, though the European aid system to support the AMIS force in Darfur. It is not a wholly unusual circumstance. A lot of the peace and security operations in Africa have the same characteristic. We have done so because, by doing so, we could encourage a number of other nations to put money into the same pot, to match us in some cases and to get close to matching us in others. The net result of it—and this is a matter of record which can be checked by any noble Lord, and I encourage anyone to do so—has been that the AMIS force has been sustained. That has had not all of the impact we would have wished to have in Darfur, but it has had a very serious impact. We are now seeing similar outcomes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and I could name others. These issues of what we can do together are important. There are excellent examples in the agreements that were reached by the EU leaders in March this year. They agreed a critical package of measures on climate change and energy, which I suspect may well lead in discussions elsewhere in the world, stretching targets for tackling greenhouse gas emissions; agreements to embrace new, climate-friendly technologies; measures to maximise the efficient use of existing energy supplies; and measures to continue to open up Europe’s energy market to free competition. Through these agreements, the EU is setting itself on the path to becoming the world’s most competitive, energy secure, low-carbon economy and to continue to lead global efforts for effective measures in this area. We have been a positive influence on those discussions. I would much rather that we had been in the position of taking part in those discussions and helping guide them than not. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, referred systematically—I understand why—to the implications of membership for the UK economy and public expenditure. As the noble Lord will know, the EU is the world’s largest multilateral trading bloc. I want to talk about other trading areas in a moment, but we are in the world’s largest multilateral trading bloc, a single market of more than 490 million consumers with others wishing to join. Membership of this market brings significant opportunities to business and consumers in this country, and allows us to trade freely within Europe. For example, according to statistics from HM Revenue and Customs, which I hope people will accept are objective, in 2006 British companies exported almost £150 billion-worth of goods to EU countries. This represented 62 per cent of our total exports, a rise of 24 per cent on the year before. But it is true that there are other, wider markets, including China, the United States, India, Brazil and those in the Commonwealth.