European Union Bill

My Lords, I shall resist going down that great sideline. We have a certain amount of time remaining in this Committee stage if we manage to keep to the subject and avoid talking about great trucks, fish, rifles, minarets and Britain standing alone in 1940 before the United States and the Soviet Union came in—and I think those countries had a little to do with the United Kingdom’s victory over Nazism. I want to address myself to the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, suggested that the total cost may amount to £100 billion a year. I thought that was rather modest. Daniel Hannan MEP, who I know the noble Lord knows well, suggested in his blog the other week—I had heard him say it previously—that withholding our contribution to the EU would enable us to cancel every spending cut and still knock a third off council tax. That must be an estimate of around £160 billion a year. The Treasury estimate is that the UK’s net contribution to the EU budget will be £7.7 billion in 2012-13, rising to £8.9 billion in 2014-15, and then falling to £8.2 billion in 2015-16. These are unavoidably estimates, partly because, as noble Lords will be aware, a surplus is routinely entered into the EU budget each year that serves to reduce member states’ contributions the following year. The initial estimate of the British contribution might therefore be rather higher than the net result declared the following year. As the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, demonstrated in the figures that he so dazzlingly threw out, the exact calculation of how much each member state gives is itself a matter of some controversy.