European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I accept that the noble Baroness knows a little bit about financial services. I apologise if in any way I have impugned her reputation in this regard. I had started saying that it is not just us British Eurosceptics who suggest that EU membership is hugely expensive. I mentioned Mr McCreevy, who last week, in Dublin I think, admitted that 80 per cent of all legislation affecting our commerce and industry comes from Brussels. We know what that means in terms of overregulation. I would quote to your Lordships the Swiss Government, who last year calculated officially that EU membership for Switzerland would be nine times more expensive than their present bilateral arrangements. There is really no reason to believe that a different calculation would apply to the British economy. We are in many ways similar to the Swiss economy, although we are of course bigger. I think that I have mentioned to your Lordships the study carried out by the top French think tank, the Conseil d’Analyse Economique, which reports directly to the French Prime Minister and has recently estimated that neither the single market nor the euro have done anything for the French economy. One has to ask: why should that be so different here? I could go on, but I trust that that is enough at the moment to suggest that our membership of the European Union is extremely expensive economically. And to all this the Government now give two answers, both of which are clearly wrong. First, they say that millions of jobs are created by our EU membership, thus implying that were we to leave the EU millions of jobs would be lost. This is clearly nonsense because the jobs are created by our trade with our clients all over Europe, not by our political subservience to Brussels. If we left the political construct of the EU, that trade would continue, especially as we are the EU's largest client. It sells us much more than we sell it. I trust the experiences of the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, in the City, will lead her to agree with that point. It is probably true that about 10 per cent of our jobs, some 3 million, do support our trade with the European Union, but none of them would be lost if we left the EU and continued in free trade with our friends across the channel. That is also part of the answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. What advantages have we had by our political subservience to Brussels that we could not have had by open and simple free trade with our friends in Europe? We must not forget that EU regulation stifles 100 per cent of our economy, including the 90 per cent which does not trade with Europe. No serious calculation has been made of the number of jobs which might be created if that 90 per cent were set free from EU red tape to trade on more level terms in the vibrant new economies of the east. That calculation should be done and it should be part of the analysis which this amendment proposes. Whichever way you look at it, it is reasonable to claim that jobs would be created, not lost, if we left the political construct of the European Union and continued in free trade with our clients and friends in Europe. The other stock answer given by the Government to justify our continued membership of the European Union avoids its cost altogether. The Prime Minister has recently started to say that our membership is not necessarily an economic matter. Perhaps this was inspired by his time at the Treasury, which in October 2005 issued a report chiding Brussels for its overregulation and putting the cost of our membership as perhaps as high as 28 per cent of GDP. That Treasury report included 12 per cent for increasing competition within the euro area to US levels, and 7 per cent for the cost of EU food under the CAP. Both those percentages are considerably higher than in the independent studies to which I have referred. So the Government’s second stock answer appears to have become that however much the EU may cost our economy, it is worth it because as members we construct the world stage as part of a large bloc and therefore have more influence than if we had retained our independence. This line has been strongly supported by noble Lords who can only be described as leading members of the ““international conference-ariat””, to coin a new phrase. From Second Reading and Committee I would mention the noble Lords, Lord Ashdown and Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, in that context, and other noble Lords come to mind, mostly our several noble former employees of the European Union.