European Communities (Finance) Bill

Yes, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. The Bill will increase our gross contribution to £10 billion—which will rise to some £20 billion after 2013—and the net receipt to £6 billion. I ask those hon. Members who say what a benefit the system is to the rest of Europe to envisage how many roads, schools, hospitals and health centres could be built here, at our discretion and for our purposes, if we were not making that annual contribution. We are told to rejoice that Italy and France are now beginning to pay something after all the years of paying nothing, but the proportionate increase in their contribution is less than in ours, and we have been making the second highest contribution. Our Government's contribution is about 0.5 per cent. of our GDP, and that is important, because that is the growth from which the people of this country benefit, but it is not our only contribution to Europe. We also make contributions to European institutions of £1.8 billion in total, including for instance the blessings of the Galileo project, which is to send 20 flying pigs into space to bounce back a location system that we get free from the Americans at the moment, so that our motorists and defence forces can pay for it. I come back to the CAP—I am sure that the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie) will rejoice. The net cost of the CAP to us, by the OECD's estimate, is £15 billion a year. That is partly in distortions to the market, but it is also the cost of not buying the cheaper food that is available on world markets, and being forced to buy the over-priced production from Europe. What could we do with that £15 billion? Then there is the cost of the European regulations that are showered on us, some necessary and some not. Estimates vary and some are higher than others, but let us say £25 billion a year. Add that lot up and we are contributing between £45 billion and £60 billion a year to belong to that institution. It is some 2 per cent. of GDP, so in other words our growth would have been 2 per cent. faster each year had we not been making those contributions. That growth is cumulative, so at the end of 10 years our economy would have been that much more powerful—and that much better able to contribute to the needs of developing countries. Cumulative growth has been lost, and that is a burden that has been assumed without asking the British people, and it is also a loss across the exchanges. We are in a substantial and growing balance of payments deficit, and we are adding to that by the flow across the exchanges. We have already suffered damage to manufacturing in this country. When we joined, we had a surplus in manufacturing trade with Europe. Now we have a steadily growing annual deficit. We have paid for that in previous years through a surplus with the rest of the world, but that has now gone, too. There is a massive drain on the balance of payments, which will only get worse if we carry on this course. Where has all that money gone? Where does the £45 billion to £60 billion go? My right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane), who is working hard for his European knighthood or whatever will come at the end of his long travails, said that it was going to help the Poles. Well, that is a wonderful purpose, and I am glad to help the Poles. I do not mind them: in fact, I quite like them coming here to help us, because our contribution does not keep them there. But what right has my right hon. Friend, or any other of my right hon. and hon. Friends, to be so generous with our money for those purposes? Where has the money gone? It cannot all have gone to pay Mrs. Cresson's dentist the massive sums that he was receiving for advising in her office. It cannot all have gone on corruption, which adds 10 per cent. to so many budgets—all of them unqualified. My new hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford was quite wrong to say that it was not the Commission's spending, because it is the programmes that the corruption occurs in, and Europe is responsible for those programmes. Is the money going to the Spanish, to build fishing vessels to come and catch our fish and take it off to Spain? Is it going to farmers in the Republic of Ireland and France? I am sure that they do better out of the CAP and the aid than do the Poles, who are the poorest in Europe. Where is our money going and what benefit do we get from it?