Finance (No. 3) Bill Debate

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Department: HM Treasury
Tuesday 5th July 2011

(12 years, 10 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Justine Greening Portrait Justine Greening
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Is the hon. Lady aware that one of the main reasons why the UK’s contribution to the EU budget is going up is that the former Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, gave away part of the rebate?

Kerry McCarthy Portrait Kerry McCarthy
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The Whip is telling me that we do not have time to reply to that point. It is a bit rich of the Economic Secretary to say that, when she made great play of going to Europe and saying that we would not accept any rise in the EU budget—there was a lot of grandstanding and playing to the crowd on that issue—and then her party’s MEPs tabled no proposals at all to tackle the issue. That is far more relevant to what we are discussing than something that happened many years ago.