European Communities (Finance) Bill

I do not want to personalise the debate in that rather unsophisticated way. However, I make common cause with the hon. Gentleman in saying that too much money is spent through the CAP. The CAP should be reformed and that money should be repatriated. Too much money is also spent through a lot of other programmes. As the auditors have revealed, regardless of who technically spends the money, it is spent on European programmes, and all too often it is spent wastefully or even fraudulently, which should be a grave concern to us all. I cannot say to the people of Wokingham, ““I voted tonight to make sure that you will pay more tax in order to spend another £70 billion over the next EU budgetary period, and some of that money will be wasted, frittered or even spent fraudulently.”” As someone who looks at the auditor's reports from time to time, I cannot satisfy myself that that money will be well spent from now on and that we should relax. The money would be more likely to be well spent with proper investigation and control if it were spent closer to the people who paid the tax, rather than if it were to go through the intermediation of a remote and bureaucratic system of government on the continent before coming back here or to other member states to be spent by officials. One of the myths of the EU is that it has a small and very effective bureaucracy. By remote control, the EU employs hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats throughout EU member states. Those bureaucrats might as well work for the EU, because they are doing the EU's bidding—I am glad that that is not the case, because they would be asked to do even more things with which many of my hon. Friends and I undoubtedly disagree. I urge all sensible Labour MPs to vote against the Bill tonight. Those who vote for it will vote for more British taxpayers' money to be spent in faraway places, sometimes on fraudulent, incompetent or badly run schemes. They will vote for this country to borrow yet more money, which it cannot afford, and to pay yet more interest. They will vote for a further deterioration in the way in which this country's budgets are run by this Government. They will vote for the results of a negotiation that was so maladroit that our previous Prime Minister gave away a wonderful set of opportunities that another Prime Minister had negotiated for us without getting anything in return. This is an extremely sad day for the United Kingdom. It is a sad day for this Parliament, and it is a day that Ministers will come to rue. Ministers should understand that they are in a big borrowing hole. They have the black hole of Northern Rock, and they have the black hole of this Bill. Labour Members will find that there is less public spending for their constituencies, and Conservative Members will find that there are fewer opportunities to cut the burden of tax on the British people so that we can prosper more.