European Union (Amendment) Bill

That is what happens when countries export their powers as we have done, and grant a monopoly to a jurisdiction that they do not control. The single market powers, as expanded in the treaty, will not protect us. I cannot be alone in witnessing deindustrialisation in my constituency. It must be even greater in more industrialised areas further north. I have seen manufacturing firms relocate from my constituency to eastern Europe as part of the single market. I have no quarrel with that if the firms are simply moving into another part of the European Union that can exert its comparative advantage of lower costs and perhaps greater efficiency. But they are doing that on subsidies given to them in the European Union budget. The workers in my constituency, through the taxes they pay on their wages, are contributing to the budget and paying to have their jobs relocated. They are contributing to the undermining of their own security. Of course, the situation is getting worse. Under the European Communities (Finance) Bill, which we debated and passed last month, our net contributions will go up to £6 billion a year. The bulk of that increase will go towards giving additional subsidies to the newer countries of the EU to aid the process of transferring jobs from this country. Any idea that the EU is somehow a protective organisation is at variance with the facts. In my view, the EU is emphasising the rights of workers to move because of the fantasy that people displaced in such a way can relocate, as they do in the United States. The US is a genuinely free market within a single country. People locate from one state to another. They speak the same language and they have the same federal laws. If that is the aim for the EU, we should be told. It is quite wrong to expect that workers should pursue their jobs in different parts of the country and the different—