I am happy to be corrected by the hon. Gentleman. His arithmetic is better than mine.
I wonder whether some towns will choose to be twinned with places in Bulgaria or Romania. I do not know whether the Minister has heard anything about that.
Projects for young people to learn about EU citizenship are particularly good, especially given the Government’s foolish decision to take personal, social, health and economic education, which included citizenship, out of the core curriculum. Young people are the most likely to self-identify as European. I hope that more information and education on, and more understanding of, Europe will mean that people will not be misled by the wilder claims about the European Union made by people who are Eurosceptic. However, I am not convinced that, once people know how the European institutions operate, their views towards them will be flattering.
I have received some interesting information from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations about how the Europe for Citizens programme is operating. I hope that it will reassure the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) that the money will not just be taken up by Europhile institutions. It states that the grants have enabled
“support for participation and democratic engagement”,
which is surely a good thing; projects on the
“impact of EU policies in societies”;
and the
“exchange of expertise between members in different countries”.
When I was thinking about who might benefit from taking part in such programmes, I thought of the Minister. Many parts of his brief could benefit from a more collaborative approach with our European colleagues.
For example, there could be collaboration on child protection on the internet, tackling the uncompetitive behaviour of the internet giants, and providing a proper copyright and intellectual property protection system. On the point about expertise, it might be worth looking at what some of our European colleagues do to prevent the export of heritage items, which is far more effective than what he is doing.