EU Financial Management

I am pleased to have a chance to speak in this debate. This is the ninth consecutive year in which I have made a speech on this subject and I find it astonishing that, for 11 consecutive years, the accounts of the European Commission have not been signed off. If that happened in Britain and the Chancellor and the Government performed as badly as that, they would be in serious trouble by now. Rather than having OLAF, perhaps we should give the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee the responsibility of looking at European accounts. As we are a net contributor, we might save some of our money if we did that. However, that is just an aside. European Standing Committee B, of which I was member for eight years—I spoke on these matters many times—has considered the issues in detail. I have not managed to read all the papers, but I have scanned them. One has only to open them at any page and look at a table and the facts start to shout out. For example, on page 121 there is a table entitled"““Suckler cow premium: percentage of claims inspected with errors””." Sadly, the UK has quite a high percentage of claims inspected with errors—nearly 20 per cent.—and although most of the cases are not serious, some are. A pie chart on page 932 deals with certain investigations. It shows that two thirds relate to corruption, a quarter to embezzlement and only a tiny fraction—about 6 or 7 per cent.—to sloppiness, mistakes and inefficiency. We are talking about deliberate mischief, not things that happen because people are not doing their jobs properly. People are deliberately defrauding the European Union budget by one means or another, which is a serious matter. The problem is inherent in the European Union in that people are spending other people’s money and it is always easier to spend someone else’s money than one’s own. If one is accountable to one’s family for the money that one spends, one will be much more careful. If one is accountable to the House of Commons, one will be much more careful. If one is accountable to an electorate who have a direct concern and interest in how their money is being spent, one will much more careful. The problem with the European Union budget is that it is remote and complex and there are myriad people who benefit from it in far-flung corners of the European Union. It would be difficult even for a very efficient organisation such as the National Audit Office to deal with a vast amount of money that is spread so widely. We have to consider the whole concept of the European Union budget. That is why I have said on many occasions, and say again today, that we should seek the abolition of the common agricultural policy, because that is where the principal problems lie. If agriculture policy was simply repatriated, each member state could decide its own level of subsidy for its own unique agriculture systems. Every country has a different pattern of agriculture. I do not think that there are any Welsh Members in the Chamber, but I have mentioned several times that we might choose to preserve the way of life of Welsh hill farmers. That is fine. It would not cost very much and it might be a good thing to do. [Interruption.] We do have a Welsh Member present, but I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) has any Welsh hill farmers in his constituency—possibly not. Nevertheless, there are sectors of agriculture that have to be subsidised. That is appropriate, but other agricultural sectors do not fall into that category. I understand that the vast proportion of CAP funds go to agribusiness sugar producers, to the disadvantage of poorer producers in other parts of the world such as the Caribbean, Africa and elsewhere. I would like us to buy more sugar from those producers and spend less on agribusiness sugar production in Britain and the rest of the EU.