I am glad to see the Minister nodding, because we believe our constructive suggestion will help to make more sense of the proposals in this work programme. Not only would each Select Committee have a rapporteur who is a specialist in European matters, if that were agreed by the House, the Procedure Committee, the Liaison Committee and so on, but the generality of departmental Select Committees would consider whether they wanted to prioritise proposals that came out of the work programme and make their own political judgment on whether they thought it was in the interests of the United Kingdom to go along with those proposals. They might even absorb some of the ideas and say they were good. The bottom line is that there should be a proper democratic discussion about it all, as that would be very helpful.
The Minister has referred to a number of initiatives, but I wish to say one thing about the repeal of legislation. This relates to actions under the regulatory fitness and performance—REFIT—programme where we must be realistic. There is far too much of a burden on British business and, indeed, on businesses in the European Union as a whole. I hear that view from all my colleagues in the other national Parliaments when I visit them. I shall be going back to see them in Athens this weekend, having just come back from Brussels. They all say the same thing: they want small businesses to be much more effective; they want more opportunities for entrepreneurship; they want to have more free trade; and they want there to be the opportunity to make
money, so that the taxation can be provided for public expenditure. If not, they find that they have terrible problems with their economises.
Finally, we must all be very pleased about today’s employment figures. It is a great tribute to the Government that we have seen this dramatic increase in employment. I just add, however, that a great deal of it comes from our expansion of non-EU trade. We see that in the premium selling points of Jaguar Land Rover and the companies where the money is really being made internationally. We have a deficit on current account transactions, trade and services, and imports and exports—the golden criteria. On that principle, we run a deficit with the other 27 member states of £49 billion a year. We had a surplus in the figures for the last accounts of £12 billion, but the figures for the two quarters for the beginning of the next projected flow are £5.6 billion and £6.1 billion. If that continues, as I think it will, by the end of this year we could find that, in one year, business, with the assistance of the Government—I give them credit for this, because they have been listening—will have doubled our non-EU surplus with the rest of the world. That is where the machinery for more employment and the drive for prosperity for this country will come from, which is why I am so pleased to have the opportunity to congratulate the Government on the figures. At the same time, I issue one small word of caution: we should not put all our eggs in the European basket.
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