I thank the Minister for his welcome. The Opposition will not oppose the Bill, but we will table some amendments that we suggest will improve it. Of course we welcome the fact that a cut was agreed on the seven-year payment ceiling for the European Union budget. This was made clear when we debated the agreement reached at the European Council in February 2013. I remind the Minister of the point I made earlier. The House had voted for a real-terms budget cut in October 2012, which of course helped to create a strong negotiating mandate for the UK. Labour votes in that debate, combined with a Conservative amendment, helped to force a rethink. It was clear at that time that the EU budget could not have continued to rise, year on year, when national Governments were implementing such difficult and deep cuts to public spending.
We all need to work to ensure that the European Union better reflects people’s concerns and that the people who pay for our budget contribution understand and approve of this use of their money. Most people probably do not understand how the EU budget is set or, within that, how our contribution is decided. The language used to describe EU finance is of course technical—the Minister has just used some of that language in his speech. We speak of financial perspectives, own resources decisions, resource ceilings for payments and enlargement-related adjustments. Over the coming months, in the lead-up to the EU referendum, we need much greater transparency in relation to how the EU uses our funding and how the multi-annual financial frameworks and annual budgets are agreed.
An area of concern that has been raised with the Prime Minister is the growing gap between the ceiling on spending commitments and the ceiling on payments. That gap, as agreed in the settlement of February 2013, is between €960 billion on commitments and €908 billion on payments. The gap has crept up from an average of 2.6% to the current 5.4%, and it is projected to rise to 5.7% from 2014 to 2020. When questioned on this during the 2013 statement, the Prime Minister said that the gap was “not untypical”, but we feel that it is important that the public can be reassured that this gap is actually manageable.
We believe that there must be a regular review of the level of EU budget spending and that the process of commitment and payment appropriations—and the gap between them—must be kept under review. There must also be a review of whether alternative arrangements may offer stronger budgetary control and improved transparency. It would help if the European Commission thought it was important to give more and better information on the budget and the budget process, and in language that members of the public could understand.