European Communities (Finance) Bill

In 1984, as a young man, I was the chief policy adviser to the then Prime Minister. One of my proudest moments in that job was when she returned from a difficult negotiation in the European Community where, thanks entirely to her skill, determination and perseverance, she obtained for the UK a most important reduction in the amount that we had to pay into the European Economic Community. It was a great negotiation because to achieve that rebate, that lady had to persuade all the other member states to her point of view. She could not block the payments that we were making because a Labour Government had agreed them. She knew they were far too high, and it was her consummate skill as a negotiator and politician that slowly persuaded all the other member states, reluctantly and gradually, to the view that Britain was getting an extremely raw deal; it was paying far too much, and justice required that more of the money should be left in the United Kingdom. As a result, the Government whom she led and those led by her two successors were able to spend more money on British public services chosen freely by the elected representatives—the majority party in this House—or to return more money to the British people to spend on their own families and businesses through tax reduction, which I greatly welcomed. That makes tonight particularly tragic, because a subsequent Prime Minister, Mr. Blair, went to a European negotiation at which all he had to do was say no. He need not have given any of that money away. He did not need any of the skills that Baroness Thatcher required to win us the rebate—he had all the cards in his hand. He merely had to say no unless and until the other members of the European Union saw the justice of the case that he was making. When the former Prime Minister moved his position, from the excellent one that there was no need to give up the rebate and that it was not negotiable, to the position that it was negotiable, I and many of my right hon. and hon. Friends had misgivings. The Opposition were prepared to listen, however, and see whether it was feasible to negotiate a much better deal on the spending side of the account, whereby the British position would not worsen, while that of all members of the Union would improve if spending could be reduced on agriculture. Such spending gets in the way of efficient agriculture in many member states and prevents developing countries from getting fair access to our markets. Some of my right hon. and hon. Friends withheld their criticism to wait and see whether the then Prime Minister had some negotiating skills. It beggars belief that he had absolutely no negotiating skills at all. Armed with the veto, he threw it away. Armed with a strong case to win over the new member states and the Nordic member states to the proposition that the common agricultural policy was bad and should be reformed, he was unable to persuade any of them. Tonight, we have a House of Commons with Labour Members almost in denial and about to vote through a disaster for the United Kingdom in the form of an extremely large bill that we cannot afford and do not want. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who opened the debate, showed bravado and obviously implied that he thinks everyone in the country is a fool. He tried to present the Bill as some kind of negotiating success and a way of increasing the rebate. Yes, of course it increases the rebate, because it increases the spending by so much more. It means that Britain will end up paying far more in the seven years of the proposal than if nothing had been given away in the negotiations. I notice that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who is on the Treasury Bench, has no intention of intervening, because she knows that I am absolutely right about the huge expensive. The documents reveal costings of £7.4 billion at the current euro-sterling exchange rate. Given the parlous state of the national accounts, we know that every penny of that £7.4 billion will have to be borrowed. If it were borrowed over, say, a 20-year period at 5 per cent.—the Government might be able to do that—there would be another £7.4 billion of interest on top of the £7.4 billion of capital that will need to be paid and then repaid over the 20 years of the debt. I leave out the interest on the interest, which would add to the sum even more. On the Government's own admission in the explanatory notes to the Bill—they are riddled with errors, of course, but I do not think that this figure is an error—the minimum cost to the state and the taxpayer will be £7.5 billion, which, in practice, will mean £15 billion or more, because they will have to borrow it and we will have to pay interest on it. If we look beneath the Government's guidance, we see that the true bill to the taxpayer and the British Government will be far bigger. This Government have signed up to a set of spending plans that mean that, on average, every year over the seven-year period the United Kingdom will have to pay £10 billion into the European Union, after knocking off the smaller rebate, which is still in place thanks to Baroness Thatcher. That means that, in practice, there will be an underlying spending increase of £70 billion over a seven-year period. Using my simple sum, if the Government borrowed that over 20 years at 5 per cent., we are talking about £140 billion of first-round interest payments and capital repayments, just to see us through the seven years. At the end of the seven years, of course, we know that we would be on another escalator, because our bargaining position would be greatly weakened thanks to the Government's foolishness in giving away this most important principle and allowing the rebate to be weakened. We know that the present Government are careless with public money. They say that any Conservative plan to spend a few hundred million or the odd billion on a tax cut would produce a black hole, yet along comes a mortgage bank in trouble and they can suddenly find £24 billion without batting an eyelid. Now we discover that they can apparently pledge this country to pay £70 billion over the cycle of the budget proposal. We know that they can propose that only because they intend to borrow every penny of it, just as presumably they are borrowing every penny of the £24 billion that they have so far made available to Northern Rock. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury produced several arguments, in the course of a long and rambling speech, for why the budget was a good deal for Britain. There was the strange argument that the rebate was going to increase, whereas we all know that there will be a worsening of the rebate and increased spending. There was then the argument that we should be extremely grateful and welcoming of the fact that, as a result of our much bigger contribution to the European Union kitty, there would be more spending in countries outside the United Kingdom. He implied that he believes that, as soon as a country gets European Union spending, it becomes more prosperous and its growth rate rises. That is a curious argument. During my time in politics in Britain, I have seen some parts of the United Kingdom receive European Union money. We know that they have been receiving it because, as has been pointed out in the debate, one condition of it is that recipients have to stick the 12-star flag logo all over the sign boards for the projects, whereas I believe that under British law they are not allowed to put a Union flag on anything that we fund directly. Somebody rightly pointed out that the money is ours anyway, because we put more in than we get back. We know that some places have been getting that funding. If we look, as I have, at the income levels and growth rates in the places that receive that funding, we see two interesting things. First, the poorest parts of the country receive the money. That is not surprising, as the main condition for getting it is that they start as the poorest parts of the country. The other thing that we discover is that, under this Government in the past decade, those areas have also had the slowest growth rates. The money is clearly not kick-starting those parts of the country into greater prosperity; it is part of the problem that is holding them down.