EU Financial Management

I will not give way for the moment, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. In other words, the accountancy principles applied in the UK by the PAC and NAO would then have been applied to EU finances in the member states. That seemed to me a rather good idea. I will not go into all the detail, but I had 45 Members, or thereabouts, ready to vote with me on that question, and it can be fairly said that I was given assurances that those matters would be fully considered. However, to this day, some 10 years and more later, I am still waiting to hear either from the Government or from Conservative Front Benchers that we will adopt those principles to get proper control over the money that is spent in member states. The Economic Secretary rightly said that such questions went to the heart of the EU’s problems. My hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) rightly said that the whole question also related directly to the rebate, because the rebate is connected to financial management, and with the manner in which such operations are conducted. Furthermore—to refer to other contributions—it relates to the European aid budget for Africa, in which I have an interest, as the chairman of the all-party Uganda group and the vice-chairman of the all-party Kenya and Tanzania groups. I am deeply worried about corruption in Africa and the relationship between that and the manner in which the EU is failing to provide the kind of effective control and delivery in relation to financial management and the budget that we ought to expect. Such things are not simply technical questions, and this large stepping stone of papers that I have in my hands—I can assure hon. Members that it is pretty heavy—contains an enormous problem that goes to the heart of the way in which the EU operates. It does not work. It is ineffective. It is not operating even according to the terms that the Court of Auditors, or, indeed, the Government, present to us. The Minister referred to the question of nation states, and said that some rogue states might in future fail to carry themselves properly on these important questions. We already have the example of the stability and growth pact, whose rules it is perfectly obvious that people did not comply with. My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor) rightly pointed out that it is essential in matters of this kind that the rule of law be complied with. It is equally clear that there is no intention to do that, and several hon. Members have made the point that we have every reason to doubt whether there is any real desire or intent to carry through on compliance with the rules of the European Union. That calls into question the whole fabric, the whole system, the whole framework of the current European Union, which has led me to believe that the best way to act would be to have a form of associate status. I do not need to enlarge on that, having spoken about it on a number of occasions. At least, however, it would get us away from what I regard as a largely fraudulent approach to the European Union, which is to say that we want things to improve, while seeing almost no serious change taking place in spite of the fact that reforms are proposed in documents such as those before us that clearly have not been carried through. There are also the reforms of the Lisbon agenda, which again have been proposed but not carried through. We need to be quite transparent and decisive. We need to be honest with the British people about the deficiencies in the way in which the system functions. We must not roll out yet another fudge, year after year after year. We must tackle the problem. I challenge the Government—and, indeed, my own Front Bench—to be less reticent in their arguments. I do not mean this to refer for one moment to my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh, but there is a tendency for an eerie silence to descend on the European issue.