European Union Bill

My Lords, I am a little dazzled by the complexity of the millions and billions and almost trillions of pounds and euros that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, has laid in front of us. Indeed, while I was listening to him most closely, I recalled a moment of great happiness when I was begging for charity recently and I received a cheque with so many zeros that they fell off the end of the cheque. I ran around saying to someone else who could add up more closely in the charity, ““Look, look, look, we have done exactly what we want to do””. He pulled me down to earth and he said, ““Do be careful—this is a cheque from Burkina Faso””. When it was added up, it came to about $5. The arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, while in no way impugning, by this comment, his grasp of finance and passionate loyalty to the European Union’s holding on to her old funds, make me wonder whether in fact this amendment does not belong in the Bill at all. In other words, is he offering us the king with no clothes? Surely this Bill is about the transfer of powers and competencies. It is not about the transfer of finance, which should enable the European Union to carry out the powers and competencies it already has. In other words, this is not a Bill that enables us successfully to argue various different figures about financing of the European Union. My suggestion is that this most interesting amendment does not in fact belong here at all. It is correct and proper, incidentally, that the European Union should be suitably funded for the competencies that the member states have authorised it to carry out. There is also the problem that this figure simply does not take into account our contribution from the United Kingdom to the EU budget in terms of inflation. How would the noble Lord react if, for example, the UK goes over the £10 billion mark, but proportionately our contribution is in fact smaller? That could be the case with the growth of Germany and other economies: our proportion—our net contribution—could be proportionately smaller but might be larger than £10 billion. In the calculation of our UK contribution—the net versus the gross—the timing of the UK’s actual contribution needs to be taken into account. This amendment is impractical on timing grounds alone, because our contribution generally comes in after the event. It is, of course, natural that I would be likely to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, on his comments that we have diluted sovereignty from the United Kingdom in joining the European Union. I will disregard the temptation to go down that channel, otherwise we will not make any progress on this amendment—save to say that in foreign affairs and defence and security, if I could dare tempt him with that wicked phrase, we have greater strength, power, and a wider outreach with our European Union member state partners than we could possibly ever have standing, talking and trying to influence alone. In fact, I suggest that this matter is in complete contrast to the measures that we, and other member states, have already introduced to make significant savings in domestic budgets. Of course, I agree with the noble Lord profoundly that we should empower our Ministers, our civil servants and our diplomats to argue as forcefully as possible against the sorts of increases that, sadly, the European Commission and the European Parliament have recently demonstrated that they want. That argument is, without question, right and proper, but to do that we need to empower our Ministers and diplomats. We cannot do that if we bring this type of amendment forward and claim that the mere transfer of money transfers competencies to the EU. It does not. That is why I suggest this amendment should be discussed in another Bill, at another time and in another place.