European Communities (Finance) Bill

My Lords, I think that it is pretty well known that, as far as I am concerned, we should never have joined the Common Market and it would be in the best interests of our country to leave the European Union. I always make that declaration so that people know exactly where I am coming from. The Bill is a money Bill. Therefore, this House can have no effect on it at all. It can pass amendments, but they will mean absolutely nothing. It can reject the Bill if it wishes, but the Bill will still go through the House of Commons after a month and receive Royal Assent. I suppose, therefore, that this is an opportunity for us to say exactly what we think about the European Union and the amount of money that we contribute to it for whatever we get out of it, which some of us think is negative rather than positive. I am sure that we are all obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for tracing the history of where we came from to get to the settlement that we are discussing. It is an interesting settlement, but worse than the one that we could have achieved if the then Prime Minister had held to his beliefs. Unfortunately, he did not, so we are paying more than we otherwise would have done. We should also be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, who has obviously done a great deal of work on this and has shown how difficult it is to arrive at a correct figure. A bewildering array of statistics has to be gone into. One wonders whether there is a deliberate plan to obscure exactly what the British taxpayers are paying. As far as I can see, the gross contribution per annum is some £14 billion. After the rebate, that comes down to, at present, £5.5 billion per annum. That sum will rise, by 2011, to £6.5 billion net per annum. As the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, pointed out, it is the £14 billion figure that is important, because that is what taxpayers pay. The money coming back does not come back to the taxpayer. It comes back to individuals, such as individual farmers—people like the Duke of Westminster—to agricultural businesses, and so on. Make no mistake: the taxpayer is in for a big sum, which is much larger than the net figure so often quoted. Money goes to local authorities but again, as has been pointed out, not to projects that would get first priority from local government itself; it goes to projects that are forced on them, in many cases by the European Commission. It goes even further. There are other projects that are not included—at least, as I understand it—in these figures but that place an extra burden on taxpayers. I do not think that the Galileo programme, for example, is included in this gross figure; it is additional. We also pay one-third of our aid budget to the EU, which then inefficiently administers it and sends it to irrelevant places. It does not go where the British people would like it to go—to Africa, in particular. We are paying out a lot of money as taxpayers. I read the debate in the House of Commons. The Ministers there kept saying that this annual tribute is worth while because 57 per cent of our trade is with Europe. At least, the Minister opening the debate said 57 per cent, but by the time the Minister closing the debate spoke the figure had been reduced to 55 per cent. In either event, whether 55 or 57 per cent of our trade is with Europe, we trade with Europe in permanent deficit. Indeed, the latest annual figure is a deficit of £38 billion, which is the great majority of our total overseas deficit with the countries of the world. Since 1973, the accumulated deficit on trade amounts to some £350 billion. Incidentally, our gross contribution since joining is £213,000 billion. Even the net contribution amounts to £66 billion. I have never been able to understand why British taxpayers have to pay this large annual tribute to trade with the European Union. We do not have to pay a tribute to the United States or other third countries. We do not have to pay a tribute to India, so why must we do so in order to trade with the European Union? Our Prime Minister, Mr Brown, has just visited China to promote trade. When he came back, he claimed that his visit heralded a new ““strategic partnership”” with China. We did not have to pay any tribute to China to get additional trade with that country, so why on earth do we have to shovel billions of pounds into EU coffers every year? The future lies with countries such as China and India, not with the EU. Indeed, restrictive practices and overregulation by the EU make it more difficult to trade with third countries than it needs to be. The European Union is increasingly interested in the nooks and crannies of British life. For example, the European Parliament now wants to ban patio heaters, as if that is anything to do with this great European Union. I point out that it has been said that these patio heaters contribute less to global warming than the European Parliament does in moving backwards and forwards from Brussels to Strasbourg every so often. Why do we have to have this interference from the institutions of the European Union? I also noticed in the Commons debate that some MPs seem happy for British taxpayers’ billions to be used to subsidise other countries. However, I guess that the majority of British people believe that charity begins at home and that the annual tribute paid to the European Union, much of which is badly directed or fraudulently converted, would be better spent in the United Kingdom on things such as those referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. I could add to that list reducing child poverty, increasing the state pension, putting more police on the streets and carrying out many other projects to improve social well-being and the decrepit infrastructure that we now enjoy—or, rather, suffer from—in this country. The truth is that the issue is not about trade but about being part of a European empire—apparently including Russia, the Middle East and north Africa, according to the Foreign Secretary’s speech of 15 November. He might not believe that a superstate will be created, but a reading of the Lisbon treaty convinces me that that really is the aim. However, that is a matter for big debate later, when this House comes to scrutinise the Lisbon treaty. In the mean time, unfortunately, we have to pass this awful Bill.