European Union (Amendment) Bill

The noble Lord is usually spot-on with his interventions, but I think he is a little out of line with this one. I do not believe that fraud was involved in the introduction of the poll tax, so I do not see its relevance to our present debate. In any event, that was nothing to do with the EU—it was everything to do with a mistake by a Tory Government, which we all resent, and which the Tory Party has always regretted. That is a diversion from this debate, which is important. A very good Prime Minister who was with it, who understood finance and was very well qualified was concerned about this £6 billion worth of fraud, so we ought to be concerned about it too. The objective of the amendment is to get the Government involved in finding a different and better means of controlling fraud within the European Union. Our own Public Accounts Committee does quite a good job, but that is not relevant to the EU.