European Affairs

I am sorry that the hon. Lady was not here earlier, because some of these points were made by earlier contributors. The value of the pound against the euro has decreased, and because we are not in the euro we have been able to make our products more accessible and cheaper. The economy is in a terrible mess, and the Government did not abolish boom and bust—most people, even the Liberal Democrats, realise that—but it would all have been far, far worse if we had been in the euro. I wish to return to the subject on which my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) intervened on me: the very important point about cost. I am not going to talk about the gross numbers of tens of billions of pounds that we pay in gross taxes to the European Union—but they are unbelievable. We do get some of that back, although first the money goes through the European Union, and it can decide whether we get it in the end. The whole thing is a complete farce, and of course the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) was right to say that we should decide on that and it should not go through the European Union. Even after that, there is a net cost. We are part of the customs union, but there is a net cost to it, which unbelievably—I am sure that you will find this hard to believe, Mr. Deputy Speaker—was £2.5 billion last year. Next year that cost will be either £6.4 billion or £7.2 billion, depending on which Government figures one believes. That means an increase of at least £4 billion. We talk of a time when we shall have to cut public expenditure. We know that we have a great deal more interest to pay on the huge debt that the Government are racking up and we know, unfortunately, that many more people are out of work so that more money has to be spent on unemployment. But why on earth do we have to pay an additional £4 billion to belong to this club, which most of the people in this country do not even want to belong to in the first place?