European Communities (Finance) Bill

I love my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), but he has not been in his place since the beginning of the debate, and neither has the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil), so I shall not give way. I will do so to those who have been here since the start of the debate. As well as making us more wealthy, it transpires that membership of the EU makes us more healthy. A new book that has just become available in the Library, in the new arrivals section, contains a marvellous statistic showing that between 1965 and 2004, the life expectancy of the British male increased by 13 years. In the United States over the same period it increased by only eight years; in France, it increased by 10 years and in Norway by just seven years. Membership of the European Union is allowing us to live longer; I would have thought that all hon. Members would welcome that. This modest Bill will allow financing of the European Union that has been negotiated, agreed and signed, and on which our word has been pledged. The shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury is quite right to say that we can veto it and reject it, but he would have a hard time explaining to the Poles, Hungarians, Czechs and other eastern Europeans who are the principal beneficiaries why we should continue the current practice, which will come to an end once the Bill becomes law, of their sending large cheques to Her Majesty's Treasury. It is not worthy or honourable. The Conservative party is not anti-Polish or anti-European, but it seems to be absolutely locked into a philosophy of rejecting anything that helps the EU to grow. This time last week, the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) made endless appeals in a fine and effective speech for more European Union action. He said that EU Foreign Ministers had wasted opportunities and that they ought to do more on Iraq. I agree with him. On Burma, he says that the EU should tighten"““targeted sanctions against the military regime””.—[Official Report, 12 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 419.]" I cannot disagree with him. He also said that EU Ministers need to show collective strength over Zimbabwe. I agree with him, but if he wants those desired goals to be achieved, there is a problem. It is not possible to demand more action from partners in Europe—I might add the case of Afghanistan or one or two other places—at the Dispatch Box while allowing members of one's party to campaign openly for withdrawal from the EU, or while writing articles and making the bulk of one's speeches utterly contemptuous of our partners. When the Leader of the Opposition talks about one-legged Lithuanians, the Opposition have a problem. When members of the Public Accounts Committee say, ““We're going to have to get tough—these guys coming in to talk to us are foreigners””, we see the subconscious xenophobia deep at the heart of the Conservative party.