European Union (Amendment) Bill

I was not going to intervene, but the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, are too tempting. I remind him that the propaganda budget—the information budget, as I think it is called—of the European Union is somewhat larger than that of the UK Independence Party. Now that I am on my feet, perhaps I may put an idea to the Government. I have put it to them before in these proceedings, but I did not get an answer. My idea is based on our agreement that the Court of Auditors is the least malign of the institutions of the European Union. None the less, it is still part of the EU; it is the EU’s internal auditor. There is no external auditor as anyone understands that expression for these vast amounts of money that we pour down the throat of this octopus in Brussels. As the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said, there is no equivalent even of our Public Accounts Committee. My idea is that, as a major contributor to this budget, we should simply withhold our contributions until Brussels appoints a major firm of international auditors, chosen by the donor nations, to oversee the accounts of the European Union. If that means standing down the Court of Auditors, so what? As noble Lords will know, we in the UK Independence Party do not mind if the whole thing collapses. However, surely a firm of international auditors appointed to work either alongside the Court of Auditors or in the nation states might take us some way forward. I fear that nothing else will, despite the blandishments of the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, and his Europhile friends.