European Communities (Finance) Bill

The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not burn the midnight oil to discover the rates of payment to crofters in the Highlands and Islands. His figures might be right or wrong; I am afraid that I cannot comment on that. A regular feature of Eurosceptic rhetoric both from Conservative Members and from the press has been to say that the European Union is a sink of corruption, that the Court of Auditors has never approved the accounts, and to ask how we can go on being part of such an organisation. Of course it is true that every human organisation is exposed to fraud, corruption, mismanagement or waste; there is no such thing as perfection in these matters. If I look back to the Conservative Government, there were egregious cases of waste and, indeed, corruption in the national health service in Wales at one point. We have also had corruption in local government. One can never clear that up completely. This country has a very good record, and northern Europe as a whole has a very good record and good traditions in this matter, particularly Germany, Scandinavia and the Netherlands. Therefore, by world standards, such cases are few and far between, but they exist in all institutions. I suspect that the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West knows this, but I do not know whether the other Conservative Eurosceptic Members do, or whether they are genuinely bemused by their own rhetoric or that of the Tory press. The fact of the matter, however, is that the Court of Auditors has not for many years put a reserve on the Commission's accounts. It has criticised not the Commission or the institutions of the Union, but the member states, which in many cases distribute the money. The logic behind the criticisms made of waste or corruption in the European Union is that we should have a federalist policy, and that member states should stop distributing structural funds and agricultural support of various kinds. The Commission should do it directly, and there is every chance, given its record, that it would do it very well. I have a little experience of the Commission, and it is a superb bureaucracy. There are few bureaucracies around the world that are so professional, good, clean, well motivated, efficient and so small in relation to the money that they are disbursing—even if it has 20,000 people, that is a small number in comparison with bureaucracies around the world and the money that they disburse. Getting 300 directives through and creating the single market in a few years was a formidable achievement. I am not advocating a federalist policy, but that is the logic of what Conservative Members are saying—they will not like it, but I ask them to examine honestly the logic of their criticism. The problem lies in the member states, not in the Commission. If the Conservative party thinks that a radical solution is required, it ought to be a federal solution, extending the competence of the Commission and reducing the role of the member states. That would be a logical solution, but is it the solution that the Conservative party is suggesting? No, because the Conservative party will not recognise reality. The Conservative party will not draw the logical conclusions from its own position. The Conservative party will simply go on talking contradictory nonsense—for that it is what it is: it is contradictory and it is nonsense, and it is about time that it was exposed as such. But that is extremely difficult in this country, because the Eurosceptic press will never reproduce the points that I am making. [Interruption.] Of course it will not: we know that. So the public are genuinely bemused about the issue, which is extremely worrying. Here is a consistent and systematic libel—it is no less a libel for being consistent and systematic, and for being pursued for many years—which has infected public opinion about the European Union.