European Communities (Finance) Bill

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. As others have revealed in this debate, it is not even clear that the proportion spent on agriculture is falling, although it is certainly clear that the amount spent on agriculture continues to rise. That is the French agenda, which has a lot of supporters in the European Union. I do not believe that the Government have a majority in Europe to support a significant change, and they certainly do not have unanimity on fundamental change, which is what they require. Even worse, we know that quite a bit of the £70 billion that we have been asked to contribute will be spent on programmes to which the auditors will not be able to give a clean bill of health. Extraordinarily, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) has told us that that does not count, because such fraud, malpractice or misspending occurs in member states rather than as a direct result of European Commission action. However, all that money is spent under European Union rules.