European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am grateful for that intervention. It may be more complicated, but the real issue is whether it should be up to the elected British Parliament, or Westminster, including the House of Lords, to decide how taxpayers’ money is best spent, and not to hand it over to the European Commission to spend as it sees fit. I do not want to make a point of this but we know that it is misspent. Let us not say there is fraud but there are irregularities in the European Union accounts—let us put it that way—which is why its own Court of Auditors has not passed them for 13 years. Surely it is better for Parliament to decide how to spend British taxpayers’ money on regional and cohesion funds than for it to be handed over to an organisation, the directors of which would probably have been imprisoned by now had it been a private company. Certainly they would have had their collar felt in one way or another. I strongly support the amendment, and I hope that it will find favour with the Government as it has the European Union Committee stamp of approval.