EU Financial Management

With the leave of the House, I shall respond to the debate. Elements of the debate have been good—I wish I could say that the whole debate had been good. [Interruption.] I will not name the elements that have been good and the ones that have been not so good, but I am looking carefully at the Opposition Benches. The debate is important and it is probably good that it has taken place on the Floor of the House rather than in Committee, which has not happened for a considerable time. It is important that the issues are aired transparently. I will try to respond directly to the different issues and questions that were raised by hon. Members. The hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) basically claimed, as he did before we concluded the negotiations, that the deal that the British presidency secured on the financial perspective was in some ways bad. That is complete nonsense. For the first time, the United Kingdom is paying roughly the same as France and Italy. The budget is generally on a downward trend. The abatement will be worth more in the next period than in this and a process now exists to lead to the necessary reform of the common agricultural policy. We would settle for all those elements as a fair and reasonable agreement on the financial perspective. Many people believed that the British presidency would not be able to secure a deal on the financial perspective and the Conservative party was desperately disappointed when we achieved that.