Draft EU Budget 2011

Douglas Carswell Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Mr Dodds]

The hon. Gentleman said that some of the increase would fund the External Action Service. Does he recall that when the service was debated in the House, it was promised that it would be budget-neutral? That was bad enough—there should have been a decrease—but can the hon. Gentleman explain why we are now being asked to finance an increase in its funding?

[Mr Carswell]

I cannot. I wish that I could, and I should have liked to hear an answer from the Minister. I am perplexed and puzzled about why we are now being asked for an additional increase in funding for a measure that we were told was budget-neutral.

The issue before us is indeed one of supply. It is a question of whether we think that our constituents’ money is being well and wisely spent. Do Members believe that, in our current financial circumstances, we should find more resources to pay for, among other things, high commissioners’ entertainment allowances and additional staff for Members of the European Parliament? Is that really the best possible use for this money? Is it better to spend it on that than on the 13,000 nurses whose jobs we might otherwise save, or on 22,000 servicemen? I do not think it necessary to be either Eurosceptic or fiscally conservative to believe that there are better ways to allocate our finite resources. When all the Governments in Europe are cutting their budgets, it cannot be right for the EU bureaucracy to be expanding.

If we do not think that this is the best use we can make of our constituents’ tax contributions, our duty is clear: we should support the amendment and reject the increase. Our predecessors fought a long and bloody civil war to establish that only this House might raise revenue for central Government through taxation. We are the inheritors of a sublime tradition, but also of a heavy duty. It is not for any outside agency, either our own Ministers or overseas Commissioners, to tell us how to dispose of this nation’s resources. We shall make that decision guided by our consciences, and in the interests of those for whom we speak.

I respectfully seek to press the amendment to a vote. Others have signed it, and I hope that they will speak in its support tonight.