G7

David Nuttall Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The Culture Secretary rightly raised this with me yesterday. We are looking at what we can do on this front. We have, in organisations such as the British Museum, the expertise to know how to help to preserve some of these monuments. We also have advisers in countries that are able to help, so we are looking urgently at this issue to see whether we can resolve it.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

As the Prime Minister may be aware, the European Commission issued a report last year on the level of corruption within member states. The report claimed corruption cost the European economy about €120 billion a year, and was apparently to have included a chapter on corruption within the EU institutions themselves. The fact it did not clearly suggests it thinks there may be something to hide. I urge my right hon. Friend to press for an independent investigation into the extent of corruption within the institutions of the EU.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Perhaps we should start by looking again at the European Court of Auditors and what it does to demonstrate the problems sometimes of corruption and sometimes of wasted or inappropriate use of money in nation states, as well as in the organisation of the EU itself.