European Union (Finance) Bill
Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Peter Bone(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Members for East Lothian (George Kerevan) and for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) on their maiden speeches. They are very impressive new colleagues. I welcome them warmly to the House and look forward to working with them in the coming years.
I agree with the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on the Front Bench that matters pertaining to the European Union budget should be made more clear. EU finances are controversial and we ought to be clear what we are arguing about and make sure that our constituents understand as well.
The problem is that numeracy is not given to everyone, especially when it comes to very large numbers. I used to teach economics, and the first question I used to ask my students was, “What is the difference between a million and a billion?” Many of them did not know, except that a billion was probably a bit bigger than a million. When I put the question in terms of the number of houses that they could buy for £1 million and £1 billion —perhaps four for £1 million and 4,000 for £1 billion—the students started to get the message that £1 billion is a substantial amount of money, and many billions are even more substantial.
Our net contribution, be it £10 billion or £12 billion—there might be some debate about the precise figure—is a large sum. Rather than talking billions, I tried to work it out in a way that my constituents would understand. For example, it is the equivalent of about 3p on the standard rate of income tax. People understand that. It is getting on for £200 per person per year. People understand that. For a family of four, £700 or £800 a year is a significant sum, and that is what they are contributing net to the European Union. Our net contribution has trebled in the past six years since 2008. That trebling—people understand an amount multiplied by three—is a very large increase in those years. We do not know how much that is influenced by the poor deal done in 2005. Nevertheless, that is where we are today.
Much has been made of the UK rebate, which was reduced, as we know, but even since 2008 it has gone down as a proportion of our gross contribution. In 2008 our rebate was 38% of our gross contribution; in 2014 it was 25% of our gross contribution. In that sense we have lost out even further. The 2005 deal was described by The Economist at the time as such a bad deal that no deal would have been better than that deal. I have said a number of times in this House, to the previous Government as well, that if they are so worried about it, why do we not at least try to restore the position pre-2005? That has not been taken up. Personally, I would go further than that.
Our net contribution over 40 years has been on a substantially rising trend. It started quite small but it is now much, much larger. The cumulative effect on our economy, on growth and living standards, has been substantial. My good friend John Mills, who runs the Labour euro-safeguards group, has done calculations to estimate the impact on growth during that period and it is substantial. We could have been a richer country by some way, had we not had to pay a substantial sum net into the European Union budget every year.
Kelvin Hopkins
Indeed. The hon. Gentleman is right. I have the Library note. The only time we had a net receipt from the European Union, or Common Market as it was then, was in 1975.
The major problem for us has been the common agricultural policy, which has been the major drain on the EU budget and to Britain’s enormous disadvantage over that time. Mrs Thatcher’s negotiation of a rebate was based on the fact that our agriculture was very different from that of most of the rest of the European Union and we were substantial net contributors, which was seen to be unfair so we secured a rebate. That rebate is no longer as large as it should be. Nevertheless, we did secure a rebate, which arose because of the CAP.
The Prime Minister would do well to seek Britain’s withdrawal from the CAP in his negotiations. That is certainly one of my red lines in the negotiations. The common agricultural policy is not a good thing for anyone, and certainly not for Britain. Last year I went with the European Scrutiny Committee to Lithuania. Lithuania used to be self-sufficient in food. Now it is being paid not to grow things. Large swathes of the land of Lithuania are being left fallow because the farmers are being paid not to grow things under the CAP, which is nonsense.
If we were outside the CAP we could continue to subsidise our own agriculture at the same level as occurs now, saving vast sums of money for the Exchequer while subsidising our farmers at the same level; or, more sensibly, we could decide how and where we subsidise more precisely, according to our own needs and what is better for Britain. We might want to preserve Welsh hill farms which may not be so efficient but are part of our culture and our environment and it is nice to keep them going, but we would not necessarily want to give such large subsidies to very large grain farmers in East Anglia, and so on. We could target the subsidies more sensibly, according to what we in this Chamber think, rather than what is decided in Brussels.
We should also be free to buy agricultural products on world markets and not have to pay EU duties on such imports. The EU still subsidises the dumping of sugar surpluses on world markets, a nonsense which discriminates against developing and poorer countries that produce sugar. There are many nonsenses in the EU budget and, as was pointed out earlier, it has failed to be signed off by the EU auditors for more than a decade and a half—a scandal. No business could operate having been refused audit approval for 15 or 20 years. It would be illegal to do so, I suspect. I want to see the EU budget substantially reformed.
Connecting Europe Facility
Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Peter Bone(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I strongly support the amendment and its heavy emphasis on growth, because growth is the way to reduce deficits. Members who have seen The Independent today will know that our deficit is rather lower than those of many other major European member states, and that our biggest debt is located in the banks rather than in state spending. The fact remains, however, that the way to lower deficits is to achieve growth. Creating employment and ensuring that people pay taxes rather than living on benefits is the way forward.
I agreed with most of what was said by the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), who is no longer in the Chamber. In particular, I agreed with the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), who pointed out that we do not need the European Union or the European Commission to tell member states what they need and what they should build, and to spend our money for us. Member states themselves know best what they need, and what should be done to meet those needs. International co-ordination is best achieved through bilateral and multilateral agreement and collaboration, rather than through the bureaucratic controls imposed by the European Union.
Big infrastructure has indeed been built by European national Governments, especially rail freight infrastructure. We have our own channel tunnel, which is a product not of the European Union but of a collaboration between France and Britain. We have the channel tunnel rail link, which is also nothing to do with the European Union. We have rail tunnels through the alps, built to a broad gauge that enables trains to carry lorries and double-stack containers and providing a freight link from southern to northern Europe. Those were built by states using state funds. The Brenner pass, a 28-mile tunnel built to a broad gauge through faulted rock, also carries freight between northern and southern Europe, and it too is the work of member states rather than the European Union. We have the Betuweroute, another broad-gauge freight route linking Rotterdam to the Ruhr. When I visited it, I asked who had paid for it. I was told, “The Dutch Government, of course.” The state bears the cost, not the European Union.
We know that the EU offers token amounts to investment projects to try to confer some relevance, presence and significance on itself, but that is not the real deal. The real deal is that states decide what they want and need and pay for it—sometimes with private finance, but largely with state funds—and, on occasion, collaborate with neighbouring states to ensure that things work well.
What the United Kingdom needs is investment in a dedicated rail freight line from the channel tunnel to Glasgow. Although we are somewhat peripheral to the continent in geographical terms, we need to be linked with its economy. I refer to the continent rather than the European Union because we are talking about the whole continent, which extends beyond the bounds of the European Union as it is currently constituted.
We need to be linked to the continent by freight as well as passenger rail, and that will be possible only if the delivery system on this side of the channel is capable of taking trains carrying lorries and full-scale and double-stack containers, and, indeed, continental-gauge trains, which cannot gain access to our platforms or our tunnels. In fact, I have been involved with a scheme—which I have mentioned in the Chamber a number of times in the past—to build a line from the channel tunnel to Glasgow, linking all the major conurbations of Britain and capable of doing all the things that I have just mentioned.
Mr Bone
The hon. Gentleman is making an enormously powerful speech, as he normally does on these issues. Does he share my concern about the fact that, although members of his party and the nationalist parties have been in the Chamber today and the Conservative Benches are full, not a single Liberal Democrat Member has been present? Given that the Liberal Democrats make such a fuss about Europe and restrict what the coalition can do about it, where on earth are they?
Kelvin Hopkins
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, but I have to say that the Liberal Democrats are in a coalition with his own party. It is his grief rather than ours, I think, so I will not intrude.
To an extent, work on a dedicated rail freight line has already begun. A terminal at Barking is taking trains from as far afield as Poland. However, although they can travel as far as Barking using the channel tunnel rail link, they can proceed no further because the gauge will not allow it.
According to an old chestnut, if we build HS2 we shall be able to take the passengers off the west coast main line and free it up for freight, but making that line capable of taking continental-gauge trains, double-stack containers and lorries would be prohibitively expensive. We need to build a line to take the freight off the west and east coast main lines and off our roads, so that the lines can be freed up for more and faster passenger trains and we can provide more capacity for passengers travelling to the north while taking as much traffic as possible off the roads. It is estimated that we could take 5 million lorry journeys off our roads simply by building that route, which would be economically viable and cheap to build.
The scheme has a precise route that uses old track bed and under-used lines, and requires only 14 miles of new track, mostly in tunnels. It will be easy to construct, it will not cause any environmental problems as the track bed is already there and it will be cheap to build. Some estimate that the whole route will cost as little as less than £4 billion. We have put in an estimate of £6 billion, which is still a third or so of what we will spend on Crossrail—I support Crossrail—and a tiny fraction of what will be spent on HS2, yet we would get an enormous advantage to our economy and transform road transport in Britain as we would not get the road damage caused by lorries, as the freight would be on trains instead.
The scheme would attractive to hauliers because they would not need to worry about drivers’ hours problems. They could put their lorry trailers on trains in Glasgow, south Lancashire, south Yorkshire or the north-east and, eventually, in the south-west and south Wales, and overcome such problems. On the question of unemployment, there is a shortage of long-distance lorry drivers because it is not a popular job. It takes people away from home and it is very difficult. The little group proposing the scheme even has a major haulier working with it.
That scheme is what Britain needs. It has nothing to do with the European Union, which would not pay for it—we would. It would offer value for money, it would be profitable and economical and it is vital for our future. I hope that both the Government and my hon. Friends on the Front Bench will listen carefully to our suggestion.