Draft EU Budget 2011

Anne Main Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

Again, we are not here to answer questions. We are here to put the questions and to get—[Interruption.] The Minister should accept that the Conservatives are now in government. She cannot just do what she did in opposition and talk tough—

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I want to make progress. The Minister cannot just talk tough on European issues and pander to people who want to take us out of the EU. She is here to make progress in negotiations and to fight Britain’s corner. I have asked her what she would see as success in doing that.

On the specifics, we are here to debate whether, when EU member states and regions are all engaged in belt tightening, the EU itself should engage in a similar exercise. The Minister has said that sizeable austerity measures are being implemented across the EU. Does that not in itself prove that this economic situation is a global phenomenon that affects all EU member states and not, as the Government say every time Ministers get to their feet in the Chamber, the result of profligate public spending by the previous Government?

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[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who has done as much as any Member to encourage this House over many years to consider its duties in a wider European context. He is the best kind of Committee Chairman—one who never forgets that the role of his Committee is to hold the Executive to account, regardless of which party is in government. I thank him.

All hon. Members face spending cuts in their constituencies—cuts that none of us wanted and cuts made all the more painful by the economic downturn. With the exceptions of health care and overseas aid, every Government Department is looking for budget reductions of between 25% and 40%. At the same time, however, our net contributions to the EU are rising by 60% over the next two years—from £6.4 billion this year to £8.3 billion in 2011-12 and to £10.3 billion in 2015.

Our gross contributions, of course, are higher still. Currently £13.3 billion, they are scheduled to rise to £19 billion. Although it is true that some of that money is spent in the United Kingdom, it is by no means always spent on projects that we ourselves would have chosen to spend it on. In any case, normal practice in politics is to measure what people actually pay rather than to deduct the notional cost of services they receive in return. Would any Member argue that the basic rate of income tax is not 20p in the pound but zero, on the grounds that the entire sum is given back in the form of roads, schools, hospitals and so forth?

The sum of £19 billion is, of course, colossal—enough to give the entire country a 50% rebate on council tax in perpetuity or to pay off our Olympic debt in a single year. The scope of amendment (b), however, is not nearly so ambitious. It would not strike out the entire EU budget—it is not about that—and it would not even strike out the increase in the year-on-year EU budget. All this modest proposal is designed to do is to reject the additional sum that the European Commission demanded over and above the increases already built into the 2011 budget.

At a time when every one of the 27 member state Governments are struggling to find savings, the EU must show some willingness if not to reduce its budget, at the very least to be satisfied by the increases we have already given it. Why has the EU come back on 15 September and asked for more resources? The Commission has been admirably frank that the additional funds are earmarked for three institutions: the European External Action Service, Europol, and the three supervisory agencies that will regulate financial services. I remind Members that the European External Action Service is the EU’s diplomatic corps. It already has about 20 times the budget of our Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Europol is the EU’s police agency, and the three new supervisory agencies have been widely denounced as likely to drive revenue away from the City of London to non-EU financial centres.

In other words, we are being asked for this extra money to fund three projects that are not in the interests of this country to start with. How much is the bill? To be precise, the EU has awarded itself a €3.6 billion budget increase this year, and Britain’s share of that increase—not its share of the budget—is £380 million. The bail-outs and the financial stimuli around the world have, of course, recalibrated our sense of monetary value, but even by today’s standards we are talking about significant sums. Given this morning’s headlines about the pressure on public sector jobs, it might be helpful to calculate how that £380 million could be translated into Government spending. It would pay for 6,022 NHS doctors, 12,666 NHS nurses, 14,600 police constables, or 22,332 Army privates.

The purpose of the legislature is to control the Executive. In the last analysis, that is why we are all here. The additional work that we do in scrutinising laws, taking up cases for our constituents and participating in debates is valuable, but essentially supplementary. When we strip it down, we see that Parliament exists to ensure that the Government do not spend our money wrong-headedly. That has been the elementary function of our predecessors since the Tudors, if not the Plantagenets.

[Mrs Main]

I will support the amendment, because I could not look the people of St Albans in the eye if I asked them to make economies and explain why cuts are necessary, and then voted for a measure that would mean the EU’s sucking out more and more of our money. I do not think other Members could explain that to their constituents either.

[Mr Carswell]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and to the other 32 hon. Members—many of whom are present—who supported the amendment. The £380 million increase comes at a time when there will be costly cuts in my hon. Friend’s constituency and in others—cuts that none of us wants to see—and when it is surely wrong to reduce spending on public services in order to increase the money that we give to EU institutions.

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[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

It is a delight to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson) and I agree with much of what he had to say. I have no intention of criticising the Economic Secretary tonight. Indeed, I support the new Government’s position on the European budget and it is much more robust than was the previous Government’s. In fact, I pay tribute to the Economic Secretary’s contribution to the debate, which contrasted starkly with what we heard from Ministers in the previous Government. There is no suggestion that any one part of the coalition is directing another. It is especially unfair to suggest that the Liberal Democrats are not here for the long run. I fully understand that a Lib Dem is not just for Christmas—if you’re lucky, there will be some left over.

I also thank the shadow Minister for her remarks. She did a great deal of good for the argument made by those of us who believe that the European Union and its budgetary processes have gone too far. In fact, by confirming that the Opposition have no policy on the issue of the European Union, she has made our job much easier. The Opposition’s position is very strange. They complain about spending cuts across the country, but they fail to say what they think about the European budget. Do they think that their constituents should be deprived of spending commitments in this country for the sake of an increase in the EU budget? That is a bizarre and strange position, but it is one that I do not have to defend to my constituents.

I urge the Economic Secretary to ignore the advice of the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), who suggested that we should engage in some sort of trail of dinner parties—presumably paid for by EU taxpayers’ money—as, he said, the previous Government did. Where did that get us? It lost us our rebate and saw the previous Government committing to increasing the EU budget even further. We need no lectures from the Opposition on how to address this process.

I am a committed Eurosceptic. My antipathy to our membership of the European Union is widely known, and I made it very clear to my constituents at the election that I would seek a different relationship between this country and the European Union. However, that is not the debate we are having tonight. We are talking about whether we should approve sending more of my constituents’ hard-earned cash to Brussels to be spent elsewhere. I am not happy to support that position, and I will certainly not support it.

What are we being asked to pay for? We are being asked to pay for a 2.5% increase in the administration costs of the European Union, at the very time when we are telling councils and Government agencies across the country that they have to reduce their administration costs. How can I square that circle to my constituents? We are being asked to approve a 5% increase in contributions to the pension budget. At the same time, I am telling my constituents that their public sector pensions will be linked to the consumer prices index, rather than the retail prices index. We are also proposing to spend an extra 4.15% on the EU schools budget, at the very moment when we will be asking schools in this country—including, possibly, the one at which I taught just a few months ago—to spend less.

We are also asking Government Members and taxpayers to approve more money for the European External Action Service. I am pleased to say that when we had the debate on the European External Action Service, I was one of the Members in the No Lobby. As was mentioned earlier this evening, we were assured that the programme would be cost-neutral, but we now know that we will spend an awful lot more taxpayers’ money on a body to represent my constituents overseas for which they did not vote.

I do not need to talk about what the extra money going on this budget increase could be spent on. We have heard about the 12,000 extra nurses or the 14,000 police constables on which it could be spent. I am not certainly going to go back to my constituents and tell them that I have voted to spend money that could have been spent on front-line NHS nurses, teacher support in schools or our brave servicemen.

We have heard a great deal today about the previous Government and what they gave up. It is an absolute disgrace that they gave up our rebate, for absolutely no reform. For the past 30-odd years, we have repeatedly been told, “Well, we’ll accept this little budget increase in Europe in return for some reform.” We have always been told that some reform is coming down the line, but it never comes, because the European Union is institutionally incapable of reform. There can be no doubt about that at all.

[Mrs Main]

There is no incentive.

[Andrew Percy]

Indeed, as my hon. Friend says, there is no incentive for any sort of reform.

Those who support the budget increase have made great play of the fact that the amount spent on the common agricultural policy has reduced. It has indeed reduced: it is down to about 42%. However, even without the fraud and mismanagement that we all know about, the OECD has warned that the real cost of the CAP is £125 billion a year, so we could go a great deal further. The hon. Member for Glasgow South West mentioned the fact that we are now in the strange situation whereby farmers are effectively farming subsidies. However, I have talked to many of the farmers in my constituency, and I have to say, “If only they were.” Instead, we are asking them to manage environmental schemes, and at the very time when we are becoming more and more reliant on imported food.

I mentioned in an intervention on the shadow Minister that we cannot get away from the fact that the EU budget has not been signed off for some 15 years, and there is no doubt that it will not be signed off again, as my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) said. Like other right hon. and hon. Members who are present, I am expected to go to my constituents and tell them that we would like to take more of their money to put into an institution that cannot guarantee that the money will be spent where it says it will be spent. I am not prepared to do that on behalf of the good people of Brigg and Goole who sent me here and whom it is my privilege to serve.

There is a broader issue, about the relationship between this country and the European Union, which touches on people’s engagement with and perception of the European Union, which was mentioned in earlier speeches. I note that Open Europe, which is a very sound pressure group, conducted a poll that found that 54% of people agreed with the statement that the Government should drop the Lisbon treaty and not try to ratify it. That 54%, as was proved in other polls, was ignored; the previous Government forced the Lisbon treaty through and broke an election promise. Some 65% of people believe that the European Union is out of touch with normal people, but sadly it is normal people’s hard-earned cash that is used to fund the EU, while 88% could not name their MEP. I wish that I did not know the names of some of my MEPs. Turnout for European parliamentary elections was at its highest in 2004, an abysmal 38.5% when I was up for election as a councillor, and it is a pretty poor pass when councillors such as me are used to drag up the European election turnout.

There is a general view in this country that the political elite is out of touch with the British public on the issue of Europe. My concern is that, if we approve yet more cash for the wasteful institution that is the EU, the gap between what the public expect and the position of the political elite will widen yet further. That would not be healthy.