European Affairs

With permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should like to respond to the debate. I had hoped to be able to commend the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) on his speech, because I am a friend of his and we often train at the same time in the gym. However, I think that he has been sitting too close to the hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) and that he has caught some of his infections. It is as though a rising damp has slowly taken hold of his brain. We have seen the sad obsessions of the Conservative party this afternoon. The Opposition's opening and closing speeches were both completely obsessed with tittle-tattle and gossip dressed up as political arguments. They are obsessed with talking about treaty making, which is something that countries in the rest of Europe have decided is not worth spending time on because they want to move forward on the things that really matter to ordinary families, such as jobs and economic prosperity. However, the hon. Member for Rayleigh did make two serious points, on Cyprus and Iran, and I agree with him on both. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, is not in the Chamber. He asked whether it was right for us to have moved so swiftly on the timetable for the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the EU. It is pretty well universally accepted that we should have been much stricter in enforcing the various different chapters. Indeed, an additional chapter has now been added, and that is important for the accession talks with Turkey and Croatia. My hon. Friend also asked a specific question about the Standing Orders that affect his Committee. He wants them changed to allow both legislative and non-legislative measures to go to the Committee on exactly the same basis. I do not think that that is possible, however, as it would make it very difficult for the Government to fulfil their required representational role in Europe. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) supported the appointment of Monsieur Barnier as Internal Market Commissioner, as do I. He, too, referred to Cyprus and Iran, but he also talked about Bosnia, which is one of the matters on which we could have had more debate. The situation in Bosnia is very worrying. Although the military task is over, it does not mean that all the troops there should be drawn down. It remains important to maintain security and to complete the transition of the Office of the High Representative at the same time as we change the configuration of the military presence there. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) is also not in his seat—my friends seem to have abandoned me!—but he was very nice about me and I was going to be very nice about him in return. He raised the important matter of Sri Lanka, which I do not think will be debated at next week's European Council meeting. We agree wholeheartedly that although there have been significant changes in recent months and the number of people allowed to leave the camps and return to their homes has increased, there is none the less a serious humanitarian issue in Sri Lanka that needs to be addressed. We believe that a robust European Union position is important. The hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) raised several things. He mentioned the EU auditors and the UK's net contribution to the European Union. As I am sure he will know, the level of UK contribution varies each year according to several different elements, including our rate of economic growth relative to other member states, the value of the abatement, the pound-euro exchange rate, the size of the in-year EC budget and the level of our receipts from that budget. It is a fairly complex set of figures. I agree with him completely on the common agricultural policy. I do not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) that it should be completely abolished. If there were no common policy, there would simply be a French agricultural policy, an Italian one, a German one, a Spanish one and so on, which would be considerably worse. However, I do believe that the CAP should be significantly reformed. We would like CAP pillar 1 to be phased out, which we believe would also help less prosperous member states grow their economies in line with the Lisbon strategy. I hope that I am not breaking a confidence by saying that my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) said outside the Chamber that I had made a wonderful speech.