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Lord Stoneham of Droxford
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report of the European Union Committee on The Fight Against Fraud on the EU’s Finances (12th Report, Session 2012–13, HL Paper 158).
Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)
My Lords, this Motion was at one stage in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston. As noble Lords may already know, the noble Baroness was unwell last week and is recuperating at home. Therefore, I am speaking on her behalf.
The European Union Committee’s Sub-Committee E on Justice, Institutions and Consumer Protection, of which I am a member, prepared the report which is now before the Grand Committee. The Motion invites the Grand Committee to take note of the report The Fight Against Fraud on the EU’s Finances. I welcome the involvement in this debate of my noble friend Lord Newby. Given his experience in Customs and Excise, I cannot think of a Minister more qualified to reply to a debate on fraud.
In July last year, under the considered and diligent stewardship of the predecessor of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston—the noble Lord, Lord Bowness—the sub-committee of which I am a member decided to launch an inquiry into fraud on the European Union’s finances. The committee sought to gauge the vulnerability of European Union funds to fraud and assess the effectiveness of the European Union’s anti-fraud system and the effectiveness of the member states in pursuing any crimes perpetrated against the European Union’s budget.
In addition, the inquiry was timed to coincide with the publication of a directive aimed at protecting the European Union’s financial interests through the criminal law. We saw more than 30 individual witnesses and some members of the committee, including myself, travelled to Brussels, where we saw all the relevant EU agencies and bodies tasked with dealing with fraud, plus a number of MEPs. We are very grateful to all those who submitted evidence to our inquiry.
Since 2011, the Commission has produced a number of legislative proposals designed to improve the protection of the EU’s financial interests which are highlighted in the report. In addition, since the report’s publication in April this year, the Commission has also brought forward a regulation reforming Eurojust—the European Union’s criminal justice agency—and the controversial proposal introducing the concept of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is designed to prosecute crimes affecting the Union’s financial interests. The Government have decided not to opt in to the Eurojust proposal, against the express view of this sub-committee, and the coalition agreement has ruled out the UK’s participation in the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
European law makes combating fraud on the EU’s finances the responsibility of both the European Commission and the individual member states, but the member states’ authorities remain responsible for administering 80% of the money. Given this fact, the overwhelming weight of responsibility for the protection of the EU’s financial interests falls on the individual member states and, in the context of criminal frauds, their crime-fighting bodies.
The report recognises the hidden nature of criminal fraud. We understand that estimating the levels of fraud perpetrated in the individual member states with any degree of accuracy is very difficult. These problems are magnified once you introduce the additional complexity of the European Union’s 28 member state structure, but these difficulties should not allow the member states to ignore their responsibilities.
I plan to concentrate on four key aspects of our report: first, the vulnerability of EU funds to fraud and their potential scope for fraud; secondly, fraud specifically in the UK related to EU funds; thirdly, the European fraud concerning VAT; and, fourthly, the European Union’s anti-fraud structure. I turn first to one of the main conclusions of our report; namely, the vulnerability of EU funds to fraud. In 2011—the year that forms the main focus of the committee’s inquiry—the EU’s budget was €141.9 billion. In 2011, the total government revenue in the UK for the same year was £589 billion. The UK’s budget is three and half times the EU budget.
Under its obligation to report annually on its anti-fraud work, the Commission produces a figure for fraud in the European Union based on the frauds reported to it by the relevant member state authorities. The figure for 2011 was €404 million, or 0.28% of the EU’s 2011 budget. Many of our witnesses told us that this was an underestimate of the problem, and Rosalind Wright QC, former director of the Serious Fraud Office in the UK, said this figure represented the tip of the iceberg. The Commission rejected the iceberg analogy and suggested that EU funds were no more prone to fraud than national budgets, while the UK Government argued that EU funds,
“will always be vulnerable to fraud”.
The UK’s National Fraud Authority which, until its recently announced abolition by the Home Secretary, was tasked with co-ordinating anti-fraud action in the UK, told us that the current level of fraud suffered by the UK public purse amounts to about £20.3 billion per annum, which suggests that for 2011 in the UK, 3.4% of the public purse was lost to fraud. So, in line with the Commission’s evidence that the EU’s budget is no more prone to fraud than national budgets, the committee took the estimate for fraud in the UK and applied it to the EU’s annual budget for 2011 and arrived at a figure for fraud on the EU’s budget for 2011 of €4.82 billion, a figure more than 10 times more than the Commission’s official figure.
The committee’s report recognised the various caveats and warnings that have been applied to the process of deriving these figures for fraud on the EU’s budget from national figures. Nevertheless, it is clear to the committee that the Commission’s official figure for 2011 of €404 million offers only a glimpse of the levels of fraud perpetuated against the EU’s finances. If the Government are right that EU programmes will always be vulnerable to fraud, and in some member states increasingly so, the final figure will be even greater. I note that in its recent impact assessment in support of the proposed European Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Commission suggested that the actual level of fraud on the EU’s budget was in the region of €3 billion, so it is moving towards the committee’s figure.
In their formal response to this report, the Government expressed concern about our estimate of the level of EU fraud, adding that they did not recognise the committee’s figure. We were disappointed with the Government’s lack of engagement with this key conclusion of our report, so I offer the Minister an opportunity during this debate to engage with this aspect of our conclusions. Given this disappointing context, we were unable to see how the member states’ and Commission’s claims to protect the EU’s financial interests could be justified. We hope that the introduction of the directive on protecting the EU’s financial interests via the criminal law, which introduces an EU-wide definition of fraud on the EU’s finances, will help to alleviate this problem.
We also looked specifically at the extent to which fraud against the EU’s budget was committed from within the UK and assessed the rigour of the Government’s duty to report evidence of fraud to the Commission. I regret that the picture that emerged was not good. The committee recognised that the same difficulties that apply to estimating fraud on the EU’s budget also apply to assessing the levels of EU fraud committed from within our shores. None of our witnesses was willing to place a precise figure on the problem, but the National Fraud Authority suggested a figure of £41 million, about 1% of the total EU-funded expenditure in the UK. However, it warned us to treat this estimate with a “high degree of scepticism”.
What emerged is that no single government department or body appeared to co-ordinate or take ownership of the UK’s fight against EU fraud. The Government told us that they take all these matters seriously and EU fraud “extremely seriously”, but the responsibility to deal with fraud and to report it to the Commission falls on the individual department dealing with the relevant funds. When asked, the Minister was not “sure” whether the Government collated all the different departmental figures into one place. This lack of co-ordination concerned us and confirmed our view that individual member states, including the UK, do not devote significant resources to pursuing EU fraud and, as is their responsibility under EU law, to reporting it to the Commission.
We therefore recommended in the report that the Government nominate a single department or agency to co-ordinate the fight against EU fraud in the UK and to take responsibility for attempting to quantify the problem. In their response to us, the Government agreed that this information should be shared between government departments and that, while there is room for improvement, such sharing already takes place. We welcome this, although we have wondered why it has been so difficult for the committee to get a clearer estimate of the level of the problem in the UK, even allowing for the nature of fraud, from those witnesses we saw from the relevant national bodies.
Furthermore, on 2 December the Home Secretary by way of a Written Statement announced the abolition in March 2014 of the National Fraud Authority. I note that her Statement makes no mention of EU fraud, nor does it assign responsibility for dealing with the problem to any specific UK body. I therefore have to ask the Minister: who will be responsible for leading the fight against EU fraud in the UK after 31 March 2014?
I turn now, briefly, to VAT fraud or carousel fraud, as it is often known. This is a highly technical fraud perpetrated against the VAT system involving a series of often non-existent transactions involving the purported movement of goods and services within the EU’s single market. At the outset of our inquiry, the Government were of the view that VAT fraud was outside the scope of our investigations, but it was clear from the evidence received that this remains a very significant problem throughout the EU. The report is clear that the committee understands the Government’s opposition to any EU measure or action which would extend the EU’s competence into tax enforcement in the UK, but we argue that this legitimate concern should not allow fraud which diminishes the amount due to the EU to be ignored or not pursued with vigour. We have our doubts that existing EU measures are tackling this problem and, therefore, the report called on the Government to suggest alternative robust measures to combat VAT fraud. In their response the Government reassured us that they are fully committed to fighting VAT fraud and that it is “pursued with vigour” by HMRC. Perhaps the Minister will confirm what that figure will be. We do not doubt their determination, but are the Government sure that the other member states’ authorities pursue this problem with similar enthusiasm and vigour?
The committee considered the quality of the EU’s current institutional framework for dealing with fraud. We found that OLAF—the EU’s anti-fraud body— remains an agency of limited powers. Budgetary restrictions force it to be selective about the cases it pursues. We are concerned that if OLAF were to be seen as a body whose recommendations are never followed up by the individual member states which lack enthusiasm in dealing with EU fraud, its effectiveness will be questionable. We also fear that the relationship between the EU’s crime-fighting agencies—Europol, Eurojust and OLAF—as currently constituted represents a tangled web which undermines any co-ordinated response to fraud on the EU’s finances.
Finally, given that it was repeatedly proposed as a solution to the problems inherent in the EU’s anti-fraud system, the report briefly addressed the then unpublished proposal for a European Public Prosecutor’s Office. This was brought forward by the Commission in July, and we issued a reasoned opinion challenging the proposal on subsidiarity grounds. We concluded the report by asking the Government how they would propose tackling the flaws identified in our report without participating in the European Public Prosecutor’s Office proposal. We have as yet not received a satisfactory reply to that question and would be grateful if the Minister could address the issue in his reply.
While combating fraud in the EU’s finances may pose unique challenges for both the EU’s institutions and individual member states, protecting the public purse in these difficult economic times remains the responsibility of us all, as we say in the opening chapter of the report. Those of us committed to countering negative public scepticism about EU institutions also have every interest in a more vigorous approach to eradicating the perception and reality of fraud. I beg to move.
Lord Bowness (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Stoneham of Droxford for his comprehensive introduction of this report and for his support—together with that of the noble Lords, Lord Rowlands and Lord Anderson of Swansea, the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and my noble friend Lord Eccles—during the conduct of this inquiry under my chairmanship of the sub-committee. I am sure that we all want to send the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, good wishes for recovery from her illness.
I am delighted that the House, albeit eight months after publication, now has the opportunity to debate this report. I will emphasise a few points, although they have been covered very adequately by my noble friend. I particularly regret the rejection by Her Majesty’s Government of the suggestion that one department have overall responsibility for ensuring that the fight against fraud is kept to the forefront of everyone’s attention. I note from the response that the Government believe that individual departments are best placed to detect, prevent and rectify fraud or irregularities and that reducing this to a single department would lead to duplication and slow down the process. Of course, the report did not advocate that but rather that one department should have responsibility for co-ordinating the efforts of each. While we understand a lack of knowledge of the amount of undetected fraud, it is less understandable why, in evidence, the Government were unable to give us a total figure for detected fraud.
We also advocated one point of contact between OLAF and the United Kingdom. The Government highlighted the difficulties of different jurisdictions within the United Kingdom. However, that should not create a problem. This is still one country with a national Government. There could well be a single point of contact. What happens thereafter would and should remain a matter for the relevant devolved Administrations.
We are also well aware of the Government’s position on the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. Indeed, the Committee and the House made their position on that clear. I do not know whether the present proposal will go ahead under enhanced co-operation but the recommendation in the report urged the Government to make clear what proposals they would bring forward to tackle this problem. Like my noble friend Lord Stoneham, I ask the Minister to explain further.
We were singularly disappointed by the apparent lack of engagement by the Government and HMRC in the course of this inquiry and report. That appeared to stem from the belief—a proper one—that matters of taxation are the exclusive prerogative of the member states. However, protecting one’s turf should not exclude recognition of a problem or the search for a solution. That I felt particularly true of the problem of VAT fraud and its international elements, coupled with the complicated and some may say tenuous connection between VAT gathered and money due to the European Union. It seemed and still seems to be an area of legitimate inquiry for the committee. That view was confirmed when the Minister told us, “Oh, it was only a very small proportion of the money that went to the European Union compared with VAT totals as a whole”. That small sum was £2 billion.
The committee went to Brussels and saw OLAF. We were singularly concerned about the apparent discord between the director and the supervisory committee, which evidenced itself in the morning that we were there. I do not know what the outcome is. Perhaps the Minister, having seen our report and the response, will be able to bring us up to date on the present position.
We also talked to a number of MEPs and the relevant committees. They showed considerable concern and awareness of the problem—a view shared, I believe, by my colleagues on the committee—but perhaps do not have the power necessary to make a real difference. I will be interested to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Ely, who is winding up for the Opposition for the first time in a European debate in which I have taken part, how, in the light of her considerable experience in the European Parliament and of matters of this kind, she sees the problem being dealt with.
Having been got up at a somewhat ungodly hour to be interviewed about this report by a radio presenter, he missed the whole point of the report and raised with me the question of the European Union’s accounts not having been signed off by the auditors. I suggested to him that it was not really relevant to the point. However, perhaps we should remember that it is not an easy matter to deal with. The stringency of the rules and the fact that the money is dealt with by member states leads to a difficult situation in the Union’s accounts. To put that in context, I read in the Times this morning that the Auditor-General has declined to sign off the accounts of the Department for Work and Pensions and that depending on whether you believe the Telegraph or the Daily Mail this is the 24th or 25th consecutive year in which that has occurred.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, who was the chairman, and his sub-committee on their decision to focus on this extremely pertinent matter and on the thoroughness of their engagement in this revealing inquiry. I also take the opportunity to welcome my noble friend Lady Morgan to the Front Bench on a European issue. It is the first time I have had the privilege of standing beside her or behind her on a European subject on which she has been leading for my party.
Three particularly striking and salient points emerge from this report. The first relates to the amount of fraud. The Commission suggests that fraud was running at €400 million in 2011—I have taken this figure from the report—which would be 0.28% of the current budget of the EU. That is a very low figure indeed. The committee obviously thinks that that is an understatement and has decided that it wants to multiply that to produce a figure that corresponds to the fraud estimated to exist in this country as a proportion of its public expenditure. It came up with a figure roughly 10 times greater than the commission has proposed. It does not have any reason for that particular multiple and it may be that the truth lies between those two figures. However, what is inconsistent with the picture given by this report is the notion, which is purveyed the whole time in Eurosceptic propaganda, that the European Union is a sink of iniquity in terms of fraud. Clearly the level of fraud is, at worst, comparable with the level of fraud in this country. That is a bad situation. All fraud is regrettable and must be dealt with thoroughly. It should be of particular concern to parliamentarians because it is our job to monitor the performance of governance in this area. Nevertheless, the figures before us will be quite surprising for the British public, who are used to being fed the propaganda line by the media in this country that the level of fraud in the EU is vastly greater than here. Some of the analogies that the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, has cited about British government departments’ records in that area reinforce that.
The second matter is very salient. It is quite clear that the overwhelming majority of fraud, perhaps 99%, arises in the area where national Governments are disbursing EU programmes. It does not arise in the institutions of the Union where fraud is an extremely rare event. That is even more striking in relation to the false propaganda that I referred to. There is an irony here because the Eurosceptic lobby in this country, which is very powerful, as we know, always makes out that this fraud is a consequence of too much European integration and is part of the evil of European integration or, they would say, the evil of European federalism. In actual fact, ironic as it is, it is quite clear from these figures and from the reality of the position that the reverse is true. If in fact these programmes were all run by the European Commission with disbursements under the CAP, the structural funds or the cohesion funds and were the responsibility of European officials, there would not be anything like the same kind of problem. There would be vastly less fraud. The problem is that the national states are disbursing this money, and it is in the national states that the losses, fraud and corruption occur, in some nation states much more spectacularly than in others. I shall come on to that in a moment.
In a way, the reality is not evidence of an excess of federalism in the European Union but an argument for an insufficient degree of federalism in the European Union. I do not suggest for a moment that it is practical to have all the community budget disbursed by an enlarged Commission. In the United States, a lot of federal programmes are actually run by the individual states, and they are responsible for making disbursements under those programmes. Nevertheless, that is a very important and authoritative corrective to the prevailing and utterly false impression given in this country quite cynically by the media purveying a picture that is the exact obverse of the truth.
The third salient point that emerges very strikingly from this report is that there have been quite serious impediments in some of the member states in following up on allegations of fraud or prima facie evidence of fraud that have been brought to their attention by OLAF. I refer noble Lords to the very interesting Table 1 on Page 29 of the report. It is headed,
“OLAF referrals to Member States”.
The left-hand column shows the number of referrals by OLAF of prima facie evidence of fraud. All the columns are interesting but for the sake of brevity I switch right away to the far right-hand column which shows the level of convictions. Noble Lords will see that for all 27 member states—there were 27 at that time—there were 199 convictions out of 1,030 referrals. I calculate that as being roughly 18%. That is the average. One sees immediately that the United Kingdom is slightly below that. I calculate that figure as being about 15%; so in this country we are not quite as good as the average. The worst performers are Italy, Poland and Greece, which all have a record of about 6% or 7% of convictions in relation to the number of referrals. Far and away the star performer is Germany, with almost 40% of referrals resulting in convictions.
OLAF is a single organisation involving people who will be working on different cases involving different fraud allegations in different parts of the Union at any one time, so one can assume that their standard of performance and the solidity of the cases that they make will be the same irrespective of the member state where the fraud happens to have occurred. That means that there is an enormous discrepancy in the extent to which these allegations of fraud are followed up. That is a very serious matter for EU taxpayers as a whole. The question is: what do we do about it?
The report does not avoid the question of what we do about it and the inquiry took a lot of evidence on that subject. For example, I refer noble Lords to the testimony given to the committee and quoted on pages 34 and 35. Paragraph 97 states:
“The Director-General of OLAF”—
that is one perspective, but a very important one—
“gave us a vivid account…of the multi-jurisdictional problems confronting OLAF on a routine basis. He argued that such multi-jurisdictional crimes against the EU’s budget are ‘European by nature, because you cannot say it is specific to this nation or that one’. He was clear”—
this is my emphasis—
“that the solution to this problem is an EPPO”—
in other words, a European Public Prosecutors Office.
“Most of the witnesses agreed … Rosalind Wright QC”—
she is, of course, a former director of the Serious Fraud Office—
“offered two reasons in favour of an EPPO; first, the current unwillingness of the Member States to prosecute these crimes … and, second, the fact that ‘most of these very large frauds are committed across national boundaries’. Drawing on her time at the Serious Fraud Office, she explained that in such cases it had been hard to bring everyone together under one jurisdiction and that an EPPO would help”.
The committee itself, which is an all-party organisation and has always to express itself with great reserve and care—I understand these things because I sit on another sub-committee of this House—is absolutely clear, using parliamentary language. It said that,
“it is unfortunate that the Government have ruled out participation without first having had the opportunity of considering the details of any proposal and without knowing what form an EPPO would take”.
It is quite obvious what is going on here: the Government are not taking into account the national interest. They are not making, or even attempting to make, an objective analysis of where the national interest lies in this matter and what the right solution to those serious problems should be. They are not doing that and should be. It is what they are paid to do and it is what we expect a Government to do in a democratic country but they are not doing it. They are excluding the obvious, pragmatic solution, a priori, without waiting for the details and on the basis of what one can only describe as prejudice or ideology. That is simply not good enough.
Now, I am very familiar with this Eurosceptic prejudice—it is nothing more than that: a refusal to look pragmatically and open-mindedly at issues involving anything to do with the European Union. That is very pervasive in the Tory party and was one reason why, seven or eight years ago, I left the party. We have before us now a Minister who is a Liberal Democrat. I did not think such prejudice was pervasive in the Liberal Democrat Party and look forward with great interest and expectation to see how he will defend the actions, or deliberate inaction, of this Government in a case where an important national interest is being explicitly and deliberately neglected.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies, in much of what he said. As a former member of sub-committee E, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, for his introduction of the report and our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, for all that he did. I also thank our senior legal adviser Mike Thomas, ably supported by Messrs Ridout, Mitchell and others. Mr Thomas’s outstanding work on this made the evidence much more intelligible and our conclusions more fit for purpose. We wish him well in his retirement next year.
As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, the subject of fraud in the European Union is enough to get everyone excited, not only the Eurosceptics but also those who consider the UK to be free of blame and squeaky clean. The fact is that fraud exists everywhere: not just abroad but in this Palace, in the City and in businesses all over the country. Noble Lords will remember that one of the biggest frauds occurred in the al-Yamamah contract. After that was investigated by the SFO and discussed at length in Parliament, it was abruptly hushed up by the then Attorney-General in the public interest. Of course, that was all about a princely sum, even for a prince, and it was assumed by most people that it was the way things worked in Saudi Arabia. But no: the SFO calmly and correctly reminded us that there are two parties to every contract who shared responsibility equally. That is worth mentioning in this case.
This country is in no position to complain about the European Union or other EU states. In fact, if our consultants wish to teach anti-corruption measures to developing countries, as they do daily around the world, they may be qualified to do so but they cannot expect countries such as Kenya and Afghanistan to look up to us as angels of accountability. We may be higher in the transparency index but we are all in the mud together. The Commission protests that fraud in the EU is no worse than fraud in the member states and it is right that there always seems to be a presumption of member state innocence. The EU institutions usually get blamed for the failure to prosecute when in fact it is more likely to be the individual country concerned. As our report states, responsibility for avoiding fraud does not rest solely with the Commission. The treaties require both the EU institutions and the member states to counter fraud affecting the financial interests of the EU.
There are, of course, recent examples of general fraud in both the EU and national Parliaments, and the issue can lead to strong emotions. In some cases, it can come to blows; last June, an Italian MEP called Raffaele Baldassarre was caught red-handed on YouTube entering a lift in the European Parliament. He proceeded, on camera, to box the Dutch journalist who was accusing him of fraud. Astonishingly, in southern Europe, the public do not always notice when their representatives are accused of fraud. There was another case, which I shall not go into, of a Maltese MEP who faced criminal charges for alleged fraud over three years. This was uncovered by the anti-fraud office, OLAF.
That brings me to one of our main recommendations, that while OLAF itself needs to improve its act and protests that it is already doing so, member states must give more support to OLAF, including taking the decision to prosecute. We were told that, in principle, to investigate a case of fraud against the EU budget, OLAF is supposed to request information from the judiciary in the member state involved. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, one of our key witnesses, Rosalind Wright QC, said that judiciaries in member states are,
“in some cases … reluctant to investigate their own nationals for a fraud on a subsidy that is being paid centrally from Brussels”.
We heard from Professor Spencer and others that, even after an investigation, OLAF has no powers to compel member states to act. Some call it toothless—but that is just the point. It was a conscious decision of the member states not to give it those powers. Because of this, at €404 million in 2011, the total amount of fraud is being wholly underestimated by the Commission.
The Government’s response throws doubt on the estimates of €5 billion, although they are derived from National Fraud Authority figures. As the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, said, in explaining the difficulty of estimating the amount, the Government say that the Commission’s database is constantly being updated and that it makes no distinction between “suspected and established fraud”. Irregularities are sometimes included and sometimes not. Again, if we and other member states are reluctant to investigate, we are never going to find out how serious the problem is; we are just going round in circles.
Communications with OLAF have been inadequate, to say the least, and what we call a lack of enthusiasm all round for reporting fraud is, to me, the most serious issue. A related problem for OLAF is that there is no single point of contact in the UK Government and very likely not in other Governments either. The Commission’s response agrees with our analysis, saying that member states have a continuing duty to provide the information. The Commission refers to the recent tightening of the system through new investigative procedures, mentioning a new regulation establishing a clearer legal framework. Her Majesty’s Government’s comment is that “progress is being made”. We shall hear in a minute what that means.
The Commission invests rather a lot of hope in establishing an EPPO, which it conceives as a “decentralised structure” integrated into the national judiciaries. We all hope that that will never happen.
On the question of a UK focal point, the Commission says that there must be a national body designated to co-ordinate what it calls anti-fraud co-ordination services, which will strengthen the co-operation between OLAF and member states. Perhaps the Minister will update us on the likelihood of any such co-ordinated service in the UK, and on any further conversations between the Home Office, the City of London police and others involved.
The Government’s response merely says that there is room for improvement; it quite reasonably rejects the idea of a new department, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, but it seems to me and to him that we are putting off the more fundamental question of co-ordination—unless the Minister proves us wrong.
Viscount Eccles (Con)
My Lords, I go back a long way to 1949 and the Council of Europe. If ever there were a referendum, I cannot imagine voting to come out of the European Union. That does not mean that I cease to think about the problems facing Europe and speculate a bit on how much of a contribution we can make to the solutions to those problems.
I have to record that I was new to the committee when it started this inquiry, and new to the procedures of sub-committees preparing reports, although I had read quite a number of them. As I went into that I thought about the background—the financial crisis, fairly rapid change, the expansion of the membership of the Union and the identification of problems. There is of course a rather large gap between the identification of problems and the practicality of solutions to them. I was also minded to think that many empires have fallen because they were top heavy. Today we know very many things and how to do them; in fact, there is a lot that we know about how we could do them if we had the resources, but we do not. We do not have the money and, more importantly, we do not have the people. The people who are capable of implementing some of the things that we would like to see implemented are spread very thin.
In considering the report, I wondered: where do we, the United Kingdom, rightly come into this picture? The report says with great accuracy that fraud is opaque. As the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, said, it is also endemic. It does not matter what we are going to do, it will not disappear, because human nature is best seen as a constant. Therefore, the first question that we might ask is: how many programmes do we want? What level of expenditure within those programmes do we want? What complexity do we want those programmes to have? What are we actually trying to do with them? If we had fewer programmes we would have less fraud. The more complex the programmes are, the greater the army of people. I have applied for European money in the past, and the number of people who will advise you on how to knock down that money from the tree is legion. It is a profession—and, of course, those people could be doing something else, perhaps adding more value. So is that the right use of resources? We should think rather more seriously about the objectives we are looking for.
We then come to another danger and another question. Are we right to be judging others by ourselves? Almost certainly not. The Commission, after all, is sui generis, and I join others in saying that there is absolutely no point in being highly critical of the Commission because there is fraud against its programmes. That does not make any sense at all. I completely agree with that. Then we think about the members, their objectives, the reasons why they are members in the first place and their capacity to implement programmes. If they take advice, which they do, there are many imaginative ways of providing that advice. That imagination can extend into how you spend the money, as well as how you get it in the first place.
I cannot get excited about the uncertainty in the figures. My question is: what do you do about the situation? What is the United Kingdom’s contribution to wise implementation of answers to these problems? When there are problems there is always a temptation to design new institutions or seek more legal procedures. However, in my experience, for all the people who claim to have a good plan to do this or that, few could implement such a plan if it were put into place. Therefore, for me, it is important to implement measures within the existing systems. How can we make the existing structures work better? Reference has been made to OLAF and I completely agree that there is a pressing need to co-operate and exchange data. Whether it is sensible to have that channelled into one place, I leave to others to decide. If people are willing to work with and talk to one another, we do not necessarily need just one focal point.
However, of one thing I am certain: that is, in the difficult circumstances that pertain, particularly within the eurozone, we need to work with what we have. I do not see any future in having new centralised institutions. As for the United Kingdom, we should cope better than we do with any fraud that is perpetrated here. We should seek to minimise fraud and prosecute those committing it. As regards cross-border fraud, we should offer others maximum co-operation, but seeking a centralised, European Union-wide silver bullet to solve these problems will not work and we should not contemplate it.
Lord Rowlands (Lab)
My Lords, while I have listened to the debate I have tried to recall the evidence we received and the witnesses we heard. I regret to say that my abiding impression of the evidence we took and the witnesses we heard was that there was a kind of collective buck-passing going on and that no one was willing to accept responsibility. Everybody said that they hated fraud and that it was a serious issue, but you did not sense that dealing with it was a priority for any of the institutions. I do not know whether other members of the committee were left with that impression.
Our report found a lack of enthusiasm, a lack of uniformity of approach and weakness in the ability of OLAF to fulfil its remit. The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, reminded us of the rather extraordinary day when we witnessed a kind of internal warfare going on before our very eyes. I hope to goodness that when the Minister replies to the debate, he will reassure us that OLAF has got over that spat. This lack of co-ordination and enthusiasm are partly reflected in the incredible divergence of assessment in relation to the size of the fraud, which reflects the fact that there is no collective grappling with this problem. Incidentally, there is no lack of activity on this issue. I calculated that no fewer than 13 documents and legislative proposals dealing with various aspects of fraud were presented to our committee. It is not a question of lack of activity on the part of the Commission or anyone else but rather, it seems to me, a lack of effective follow-up, and of matching that activity with effective operational action on the ground across the piece.
There have been suggestions about reforming OLAF and Eurojust, and my noble friend Lord Davies mentioned the EPPO. The committee did not, and has not, endorsed the concept of the EPPO. I am sure that he did not intend to create the impression that it had. It did not endorse that concept in the report and has not undertaken a full inquiry into it. I hope that noble Lords do not have the impression that it has endorsed that concept. That is certainly not the case. Of course since we did our report, the Commission has come forward with a proposal. I am afraid to say that, as it was brought forward, it certainly would not have gained my support in any shape or form; I am not sure about other members of the committee. I shall tell my noble friend why. First, this House, the other House and indeed 11 Parliaments found the Commission’s EPPO proposal offensive to the whole principle of subsidiarity.
It is not only that. I have one other suggestion why the Commission’s proposal is fundamentally flawed, and it is exactly one of the points that my noble friend made. The draft seeks to propose exclusive criminal jurisdiction to one office, seeking to override national needs and priorities. I am afraid that that does not make any sense. As my noble friend rightly points out, 80% of the budget is delivered at national level. It cannot be the exclusive criminal jurisdiction of one new office to deal with the issue, when in fact the disbursement of such money is overwhelmingly conducted at national level. It has to be a shared responsibility with shared co-operation. Indeed, the treaty obliges the Commission and member states to deal with this together. Therefore, rather than looking for a solution in a brand new, single office of the kind my noble friend obviously rather likes, I would look for an alternative form of enforced shared co-operation between institutions, governments and national and European agencies. That is where the future solution to these problems lies.
My final point is that, within those improvements that we should have in co-operation and shared responsibility, and within our own arrangements, is the question of having a single agency or point of contact. Interestingly, over a year ago in the evidence that we received, there was a volunteer: Commissioner Leppard of the City of London Police volunteered to be the first point of contact, as members might recall. Indeed, in his evidence, he said that his force was in discussion with the Home Office to develop the concept of the first point of contact being the City police. That was November 2012. We are a year on. How much progress has been made? Is the proposal still considered significant? How far have we got with it? If we have got very little from it, it will only reflect what we all fear: that there is not a willingness to carry some of the reforms and changes through.
That specific proposal was put on the table just over 12 months ago—one organisation saying, “We will be the only point of contact to co-ordinate activities, including the devolved Administrations”. When the Minister comes to reply I would be grateful if he would tell us how far that proposal has gone. I would judge the success of the changes that have occurred by our doing at least the one thing that we can do ourselves: to decide on one single point at which the co-ordination of these activities takes place. If we do not do that, we will not be seen as combating European fraud.
Baroness Morgan of Ely (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, for his introduction. I also thank the committee for its work not just on this report, but over many decades. The reputation of this committee is second to none. Certainly during my years on the budget control committee in the European Parliament, we used to look forward to giving evidence to your committee because we knew that there would be a thorough investigation, with sophisticated understanding of the complexities of the way in which EU finance works—so I feel privileged to speak in front of you today.
The clamour for change and the screaming headlines against the EU when the Court of Auditors published its annual report were things we learnt to live with on an annual basis. I learned then—this is underlined in the report—that the picture is much more complicated. There needs to be a better understanding than the one those screaming headlines suggested.
We need to be absolutely clear of what we are talking about when we discuss fraud. The Court of Auditors first takes sample payment transactions in the EU at EU level, national level, regional level and even down to individual beneficiary level. Any errors found in these audits are classified as either quantifiable—which means there is a potential impact—or not. The impact rate of the error is then extrapolated to reach a most likely error rate. That then applies to each department, and then to the budget as a whole. It is completely different from the way in which we do things in Britain and that is probably part of the reason for the misunderstanding.
We should be clear that those error rates cannot simply be translated into an amount lost. Let me give an example. If you have a tender process to build a road and someone completed the forms in a way which did not comply with all the rules, that does not mean that the road was not built or that you did not get value for money; it means that the forms were not completed in the correct way. That would be counted as a problem; it would be put into the figures as problematic.
As the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, reminded us, 80% of finance is controlled by member states. In fact, the money never leaves Britain. It does not go to the EU and come back; it never leaves Britain. Therefore it is expected that member states should put systems in place to protect the EU’s financial interests.
It is also worth noting that the Court of Auditors has signed off the EU account for the sixth year in succession. It has given a clean bill of health to the Commission’s accounting books. That means that every euro spent from the EU budget was duly recorded in the books and properly accounted for. However, for payments the court requires an error rate of less than 2% before the EU budget can be declared to be free from material error. At the moment the error rate is below 5% but, as it is not close enough to that 2%, it will not sign off the payments account.
Turning to the subject of the report, deliberate fraud is different from errors. It constitutes a criminal action and has to be dealt with severely. The question being asked in the report is whether the systems and mechanisms that are in place are adequate to measure fraud and defend the EU against it. Is the UK taking up that responsibility and policing this area seriously?
The recommendations made in the report seem eminently sensible. The proposals to establish a government agency or department to take overall responsibility and for OLAF, the anti-fraud unit of the EU, to have one point of contact make sense. OLAF did not exist when I was in the European Parliament but was set up while I was there. I can assure noble Lords that there was a great deal of in-fighting when it was set up, but I hope things have settled down since then.
It makes sense to have one point of contact. I was a member of the budget control committee in 1999 when the Commission was forced to resign in response to the failure to take seriously the matter of fraud against the EU budget. The subsequent report written by the wise men suggested that it was impossible to find anyone, at any level, in the Commission to take responsibility. That phrase stood out to everyone. My concern is that having sat in the European Parliament for 10 or 15 years considering this issue and hearing that it is up to the member states to do something about it, I do not want to come back to the UK and hear, “It is not our problem. It is a difficulty for the EU. We all have to work together”.
This falling between two stools is the problem here. It is a fate that we must avoid in the UK. Knowing who is responsible for collecting and collating information and where the buck stops is fundamental to good governance. I take issue with the suggestion that the multiple jurisdictions of the UK provide a block to this. We manage to organise this for every other aspect of the EU’s relationship with the UK, so why not in the area of fraud?
Of course, the amount of fraud is by its nature difficult to quantify, so the Commission’s figures are only estimates, but it seems that there is a lack of enthusiasm to engage with the detection and reporting of fraud against the EU. This is underlined by the fact that the Commission has reported a very low number of irregularities as fraudulent in the UK, which has a relatively high EU spending rate compared with other member states, suggesting a degree of non-compliance with reporting principles. Will the Minister therefore explain what control systems and mechanisms are being put in place to detect fraud, in particular in the higher risk areas?
It was extremely disappointing that the Government did not answer the issue of VAT fraud against the EU budget seriously. Of course, a larger proportion of VAT goes to member states, but the contribution to the EU’s budget is fundamental. The figure of £2 billion that was suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, is fundamental to the revenue stream of the EU. Carousel fraud is not insignificant. While nobody is suggesting that the EU should extend its competence into tax enforcement, it is entirely legitimate for the Commission to question member states on their pursuit of this fraud which has a material effect on the Commission’s budget.
The prosecution of fraud remains a national matter, and while the UK does not want to sign up to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, I question whether we take our responsibilities seriously in terms of prosecuting fraud against the EU budget. I remember on several occasions hearing how OLAF investigations were passed on to member states but were not pursued with any vigour in the member state. We heard evidence from some very senior British police enforcement representatives who suggested that although they understood their responsibilities, they had an inbox full of domestic crimes and targets on specific crimes that they had to meet so, somehow or other, EU fraud cases always seemed to find their way to the bottom of the in-tray. What is the Government’s target for prosecution? We have heard that 18% are prosecuted. What is the target? That seems to be a way to get this to the top of the in-tray of those police enforcement agencies.
Finally, will the Minister outline the timetable for the proposed fraud directive, and explain how he intends to use the expertise of the European committee in the Lords for those deliberations?
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Stoneham for his introduction to this report, to all noble Lords who have spoken and to the committee itself for the detailed report into the fight against fraud on the EU’s finances.
It may be blindingly obvious, but I start by saying that the Government also take fraud and the management of taxpayers’ funds very seriously. We have adopted an increasingly robust stance on financial management, and we remain committed to securing and enforcing the most effective means of fighting fraud at both a national and EU level. Fraud against the EU budget remains a matter of great concern, and this Government have adopted a leading role in calling for improvements to the way EU finances are managed.
I remind noble Lords that we are the first Government to take a firm stance on fraud against the EU budget by voting against the Council’s decision to recommend discharging the Commission of its responsibility to manage the EU budget. We took a stand by abstaining on the Council position on discharge of the 2009 EU budget and increased the pressure by voting against the Council’s recommendation to discharge in 2010 and 2011. We have also continued to encourage like-minded, budget disciplinarian member states to join us in sending the strongest possible message that financial management needs to be improved. In 2010 and 2011, Sweden and the Netherlands joined the UK in voting against the Council’s discharge recommendations and issued a joint statement calling for improvements to the way EU funds are managed.
We have also been at the forefront of the drive for real changes to improve errors within EU budget expenditure. For example, in the light of the European Court of Auditors’ reports confirming that much of the expenditure error is due to excessively complex rules, the Government successfully worked with allies to push for the significant simplification of the complex rules for beneficiaries of EU funds. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, said about it being disappointing that the Court of Auditors has been unable to provide a positive statement of assurance for the most recent budget, as has been the case for a number of years. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Ely, explained why it is quite difficult to get to the necessary level of assurance. As the noble Lord reminded us, and as I have, over the years, reminded Eurosceptics within your Lordships’ House, it is a very long time since the DWP budget received a similar assurance statement.
When the Government replied to the report in July, the Financial Secretary gave a detailed response to all the findings. While that response still reflects the Government’s overall position, I will seek to respond to some of the additional requests for clarification made by noble Lords.
A number of noble Lords raised concern over the estimated level of fraud against the EU budget. The Government appreciate that the Commission’s assessment of the amount of fraud against the EU budget is an estimate and cannot give a full picture, by which I mean that the real level of fraud is necessarily going to be higher than the figure that it has produced. In order to get more nearly to a figure, it is therefore important to ensure that the quality and consistency of reporting by all member states is of a standard that allows the Commission to receive accurate information upon which to base its estimate.
It is also important that other contributing factors, such as the constant updating of the database, are resolved to improve the data that the Commission receives and holds. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Ely, explained some of the complexity of the process, and although it is very easy to damn it on the basis that it should be possible to sort this out, in practice it is extremely difficult in a 27-member Union to get the kind of consistency and quality of reporting that gives us absolute confidence that the final correct figure has been reached. As the recipient of reporting information from member states, the Government believe that the Commission is best placed to provide such a clear estimate, but more work needs to be done.
I am sorry that the committee finds the Government’s decision not to recognise its estimate of actual fraud disappointing, but we maintain the view expressed by the Financial Secretary in his substantive response. I have a lot of sympathy with the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, who said that we should not get excited about the absolute estimate of fraud but should worry much more substantively about bearing down on it.
With that that in mind, I turn to our reporting of fraud against the budget. The Government remain committed to this work and do not accept the view that we are lacking in enthusiasm or drive in our approach to tackling such fraud. In line with existing reporting obligations, the Government rigorously collate comprehensive data on fraud and consistently report them to the Commission.
As identified in the committee’s report, the UK does not have a central department or agency responsible for the fight against fraud. Individual departments and agencies are responsible for monitoring and acting on fraud against the EU funds they receive and spend. This does not demonstrate a lack of commitment or dedicated resource but reflects the UK’s national arrangements for handling EU funds. When one is talking about funds being spent by Administrations in Northern Ireland and Scotland, it is natural for them to be contacting the EU directly with information. Furthermore, the Government have a new approach to fraud because the creation of the National Crime Agency has given us the opportunity to pull expertise in anti-fraud work into a dedicated Economic Crime Command. The ECC will work closely with national police forces and partners, as well as with the EU and international equivalents. However, the Government remain of the view that the Commission, as the recipient and collator of fraud statistics, is best placed to provide a breakdown of fraud at an EU level and within individual member states. I shall come back to the question of the single point of contact.
A number of noble Lords raised the issue of VAT fraud, which has been and remains a significant problem. It is, however, worth pointing out that since 2005-06 NTIC fraud estimates have decreased from between £3 billion and £4 billion to around £1 billion in 2011-12, which demonstrates that effort has been put in to tackle this very serious, arguably the single biggest, area of EU fraud that affects the UK. We have had a significant positive impact.
We take seriously all forms of fraud, which is why in the 2010 spending review HMRC was allocated an additional £917 million to help it recover unpaid tax and excise duties in the next four years, of which some £90 million is being spent on tackling organised criminal attacks, and we have had some significant successes. Further, the number of criminal prosecutions across a range of taxes, including VAT, is to be increased fivefold. I am not sure that that is quite the target that the noble Baroness was looking for, but it is an indication of the Government’s ambition in this area. However, it is clear that VAT fraud is not solely a concern for the UK and, noting the committee’s concern and points raised by noble Lords, I can confirm that we encourage other member states to maintain the pressure to reduce VAT fraud within their jurisdictions with the same enthusiasm and vigour that we employ.
I turn to our engagement with the European anti-fraud office, OLAF. It is clear that its success relies on effective co-operation with partners in member states, third countries, international organisations and EU institutions. The Government fully cooperate with OLAF’s work in the UK. Its efforts to detect and tackle fraud, including through seeking financial redress for the EU budget where possible, is highly important to us. The UK, through the National Crime Agency, provides a number of UK-wide liaison services and is taking steps to improve our engagement with Europol, Eurojust and OLAF. This includes, through the NCA, providing bureau services to Europol and Interpol and being home to the UK Financial Intelligence Unit. It does this through the Europol national unit, which is based in the UK International Crime Bureau of the NCA and is supported by the UK national unit based in The Hague. The ENU provides a channel for all UK law enforcement engagement with Europol. The Government believe that the NCA’s work with these agencies and services, including Eurojust, Europol and OLAF, will strengthen co-operation with our European and international partners to fight cross-border fraud.
I return to the question that many noble Lords raised about our response to the requirement to provide a single point of contact. This is, as noble Lords mentioned, something that has been under discussion for some time. City of London Police has indeed offered to be such a contact point and continues to be in discussion with the Home Office. As noble Lords will be aware, the Home Office works in an extremely deliberative way and I hope that we will have a decision on this as soon as possible.
Lord Rowlands
I apologise for interrupting the Minister. What is “as soon as possible”, given that we have already had a 12-month pause?
Lord Newby
My Lords, it is a slightly flexible definition. The best I can do is draw to the Home Office’s attention the strength of feeling that clearly exists in your Lordships’ House that this decision should now be taken quickly.
Moving on to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Government accept that multijurisdictional crime against the EU budget is European in nature but believe, as noble Lords pointed out, that an EPPO is not the only or the right solution to the problem. The noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, gave some of the arguments for that, but I repeat our view: a centralised European prosecutor with harmonised powers to initiate investigations and order investigative measures is incompatible with the division of responsibilities in many EU countries where law enforcement and prosecutors have different roles from that of the independent judiciary. As such, it would require fundamental changes to those member states’ legal systems and existing operational structures to implement the Commission’s vision of a supranational body with powers of investigation or prosecution within UK jurisdiction.
The Committee asked how the UK would address the shortcomings in existing processes for tackling fraud in the absence of being a participating member of the EPPO. The Government will continue to focus on preventing and tackling fraud against the budget and draw on their new approach to policing fraud. On the response to identified crimes, the Serious Fraud Office uses a similar model to the EPPO by bringing prosecutors and police together to fight serious fraud but there are differences. There are limits to the SFO’s statutory investigative powers but the existence of the SFO at national level is evidence of a domestic model that is similar to the EPPO proposal. Further, the creation of the National Crime Agency’s Economic Crime Command means that we have an opportunity to pull expertise in anti-fraud work into a dedicated policing unit. The ECC will work closely with national police forces and partners as well as the EU and international equivalents.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. If, as on the Minister’s own admission, the Serious Fraud Office and the ECC have structures that are very similar to the proposed EPPO in that they combine investigative and prosecuting functions, what is the ideological objection to accepting the EPPO? It appears that we have already accepted that those two functions should be shared by the same agency. The Minister will know that there is no suggestion that the courts—the judicial function—should be combined with the EPPO. The EPPO having decided to prosecute would have to do so in front of judges who would be quite independent from it.
Lord Newby
As I said, among other things there are differences between the SFO’s investigative powers and the EPPO proposal’s powers. As I should have said, it was a component of the coalition agreement that the UK would not support our involvement with such an organisation. That remains our view.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I am grateful for what is clearly a very honest and frank statement by the Minister. That gets to the heart of it. His previous remark left the impression that he was desperately trawling around to find some minor detail of difference between the structure of the SFO and the proposed EPPO to justify a decision that cannot be justified on pragmatic grounds. As he said, it is essentially a political decision. The Committee, the House and the public will be grateful for his frankness.
Lord Newby
My Lords, I think that the noble Lord is slightly confused about the difference between a political decision and a sensible decision. Just because something is in a political agreement does not mean that there are not very serious substantive reasons for it, apart from any reasons that he would disapprove of. I am sure that that is the case in this particular example.
There were two final things that I wanted to pick up on. The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, asked about the relationship between OLAF and the Supervisory Committee and what could be done and might be happening. This is an extremely unfortunate dispute that has arisen, and there is a limited amount that the UK Government can do on their own to resolve it. We accept that the Supervisory Committee has an important role but, equally, it is important that it does not operate in such a way as to impede OLAF’s work. We are trying as best we can not to knock heads together—that is perhaps too strong—but to use what influence we have to get these two bodies to work together. It is extremely depressing to read that part of the committee’s report and evidence because it is the kind of thing that legitimately gets the EU and its ways a bad name.
The final issue that I want to address, which the noble Baroness raised, is on how we would engage with committees on the PIF directive. This has raised difficult issues for the UK, and Ministers across government have been considering how best to approach the proposal. Discussions within government are now reaching their final stages, and we hope to be in a position to offer the relevant scrutiny committees a fuller explanation shortly. At the same time, we will seek to address the concerns about the opt-in trigger point.
This has been an extremely useful debate on an extremely important issue. I hope that I have been able to explain how the Government are tackling it. I realise that I will not have satisfied noble Lords in every respect, but I will speak sternly on noble Lords’ behalf to colleagues in the Home Office so that we might make progress at least in that respect.
Finally, I thank the committee for its work and for holding the Government to account in this area of our work.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford
I thank my noble friend for his response and everybody who has spoken in this debate. I have already thanked, but would like to do so again, the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, for his leadership of this group. I would also like to mention Tim Mitchell, as well as Mike Thomas, and thank them for their support during this investigation.
We had a number of speeches from members of the committee, and I appreciate their support and also that of the noble Lord, Lord Davies. It was good to hear a pro-European being so pointed in his comments, both on our report and on the Government’s approach.
On the Government’s response, I understand that my noble friend was in great difficulty in going further than the response that we have already had, but those of us who were listening carefully appreciated a number of his comments. He said that more work needs to be done on estimating the level of fraud, and the committee will certainly welcome that. He talked about the new approach with the National Crime Agency; that is something that we will want to look at, particularly with its additional emphasis in setting up a special group on economic crime. I am not sure that we got quite the single-source co-ordination that we were looking for, but we appreciate the efforts that the Government and Treasury are making on tax fraud in general and his reassurances on the work being done on VAT.
I accept that it is very difficult to give a perspective on OLAF, but my noble friend said that the National Crime Agency would strengthen relationships with OLAF and Eurojust, which we welcome.
I am sure that we wish to emphasise and support the strength of feeling that my noble friend will communicate to the Home Office, via the strong arm—we hope—of the Treasury, in relation to what needs to be done regarding the single point of contact. We look forward to the Government developing their alternative to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office proposal. I thank all Members of the Committee for their support in what has been a very interesting debate.