European Communities (Finance) Bill

Certainly in terms of borrowing it is, but that was a debate for earlier today. Other costs are associated with the CAP, such as higher food prices and market distortions. It is estimated by the OECD that that costs Britain £15 billion a year, so the CAP is not just a matter of subsidies to the budget, but a real further cost in higher food prices as well. The CAP should be abolished, not reformed. Reform can mean many things to many people, but it usually means not very much to anyone. The reality is that reform has been gradual—a bit here, a bit there—and sometimes it is two steps backwards rather than two steps forwards. The reform programme has not been a great success. We should have used the lever when the budget was being negotiated. We should have refused to agree until serious progress was made towards the eventual abolition of the CAP. We could have argued for that on the basis that what was saved could be used directly to help the poorer nations of Europe that are struggling to advance the living standards of their peoples. That would be far preferable. A number of estimates of the cost of EU membership have been made. There is a Swiss view—Switzerland is outside the EU—set out in a Europe 2006 report. It states that full EU membership would cost the country 1 per cent. of the Swiss national income. Well, 1 per cent. of national income in one year may not seem very much, but if it is compounded over many years or decades, it becomes a very large sum of money indeed. It has been estimated elsewhere that the cost of the European budgetary and economic arrangements to Britain is about 0.5 per cent. of our gross domestic product. Again, that may not sound much in one year, but if we compute it over 40 or 50 years, it becomes a very substantial sum. Many of us have argued that how the EU is constituted at the moment does not actually benefit the peoples of Europe economically, so we would do better to have different economic arrangements—not to break up the EU entirely, but to have different economic arrangements within it, with each member state deciding what is most appropriate for its own economy.