European Communities (Finance) Bill

Thank you for calling me to speak at the end of this important debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall try to keep my remarks short. This has been an interesting debate, with some varied contributions. I notice that the Government could only get the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) and the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) to speak in favour of their position. The right hon. Member for Rotherham gave a long and—as I said when he was in the Chamber—fairly tedious speech, but he did it with a twinkle in his eye. Too often, however, when we have debates about Europe, we start to throw out words such as ““racist”” and ““xenophobic””, and that does this place no good at all. It brings the whole political class into disrepute. It is perfectly reasonable to be concerned about this country's relationship, and its future relationship, with Europe without being called a racist or xenophobe. Those terms are thrown around the Chamber far too often, in far too many debates. The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford made an excellent contribution. We on the Opposition Benches are now realising that he is far more use to us on the Government Benches than he ever was on ours. I have to tell the Minister that we are really not going to have the hon. Gentleman back; I know that you want him to come back over here, but he is yours for keeps. One of my concerns about the European Union project and the common agricultural policy is the implications that they have for developing countries, particularly in Africa. Farming is fundamental to those countries' development and economic growth, yet we weight agricultural subsidies in favour of our own well-heeled farmers, as the hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) has just pointed out. We make it difficult for African farmers to bring their produce to our markets, yet we think nothing of taking our excess product that no one here or in Europe wants to buy and dumping it on their markets at massively reduced prices, making it impossible for African farmers to compete. I have used this example before, and I will use it again: there are markets in Nigeria that are selling tinned European tomatoes. That is simply madness, and we in the European Union must put an end to it. It is unsustainable for us to subsidise our farmers off the backs of struggling African farmers. If we are really going to demonstrate that we want to improve the outlook for African countries and to strengthen their economies, we must allow them access to our agricultural markets. We must allow them to compete on an even footing. I should like to inject a note of caution. The Minister talked earlier about the environment. Of course, the environment is hugely important; global warming is a huge challenge. We must be very careful, however, that people in the European farming community do not use the environment as yet another reason to deny African farmers access to our markets by talking about the number of air miles involved in the shipment of food. I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that you do not want us to talk about carbon footprints, but foods imported from Africa often have a far smaller carbon footprint, because they are grown in natural sunshine rather than in expensive, heated greenhouses. We must not use the concern about the environment that is shared by our EU partners to block African farmers' access to our markets. When we have debates about Europe, we do not do the political class any great favours. We use abstract phrases and high-minded language. Of course, we are very high-minded people, but we must remember that what we do here has to be relevant to a wider audience. I know, from going around my constituency, that there is concern about the European project and about these quite significant additional sums of money that we are going to hand over to the newly joined member states of the European Union. I do not think that my constituents are mean-minded people, however. They understand that there is an argument for helping emerging economies in Europe to get the foothold that they need to become wealthier and to become our trading partners, but they also have a legitimate right to be concerned about the sums of money being talked about. We must not dismiss those concerns as the concerns of racists and xenophobes. After all, any money that we spend in this place belongs to the taxpayer. It belongs to the people whom we represent, and it is therefore incumbent on us to make a strong case for spending it. Ultimately, we should be answerable to them for where their taxes are going.