Draft EU Budget 2011

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Cash]

As a matter of fact, it is pretty obvious that I am not a member of the coalition Government, so let us dispense with that idea straight away. In my votes over the past few weeks, I have probably demonstrated that I have certain reservations about the situation, but I am not going further down that path now.

If the European Parliament is allowed to get away with this, it will add fuel to fire of the riots and demonstrations that are already sweeping many cities in different countries throughout Europe. Those countries face problems of immigration, economic stress and high unemployment, and wilfully to attempt to increase the EU budget when the whole thing needs to be rejected is, to my mind, irresponsible. If the EU Parliament persists, it cannot be regarded as a serious and responsible Parliament. That is my concern.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

rose—

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

rose—

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[Mr Cash]

Mine is not an absolutist position in the sense in which the hon. Gentleman puts it. My amendment (a) says that an increase is simply not justifiable. What is justifiable could also be described as what is fair and right. I have just described what I suspect will happen throughout Europe if people continue to increase the budget irrespective not only of our spending review, but of the crisis in Greece and of the situations in other member states, including very high levels of unemployment, the rise of nationalism that goes with that, and the populism that will emerge from those who want to agitate and create trouble. We want a stable Europe and a stable United Kingdom, which is precisely why I take the view that we need to act responsibly and ensure that the UK Government have every opportunity to achieve their objectives. I assure the House that nobody can accuse me of being in any way reluctant to speak my mind on matters relating to the EU, and I am sure that no one would presume to do so.

[Mr Dodds]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for his long years of campaigning on this issue and his work as Chairman of the ESC. Given the provocative behaviour of the European Parliament and its attitude to a budget increase, which he outlined, should this House not put down an equally strong marker by strengthening the Minister’s negotiating hand and saying, “Far from increasing or freezing the budget, we want a reduction”?

[Mr Cash]

I do not want to enter into an unnecessary altercation about this with my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton, but if the wording had been put to me, I would have included the words “and if the European Parliament and its committee persist in the behaviour that they are now engaged in, we would have to call for a reduction in the budget.” It would be on that basis, not on the basis of requiring the Government to respond when they are in the process of negotiations. Perhaps the distinction comes at that point, although I agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments.

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[Mr Carswell]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and to the other 32 hon. Members—many of whom are present—who supported the amendment. The £380 million increase comes at a time when there will be costly cuts in my hon. Friend’s constituency and in others—cuts that none of us wants to see—and when it is surely wrong to reduce spending on public services in order to increase the money that we give to EU institutions.

[Mr Dodds]

The hon. Gentleman said that some of the increase would fund the External Action Service. Does he recall that when the service was debated in the House, it was promised that it would be budget-neutral? That was bad enough—there should have been a decrease—but can the hon. Gentleman explain why we are now being asked to finance an increase in its funding?

[Mr Carswell]

I cannot. I wish that I could, and I should have liked to hear an answer from the Minister. I am perplexed and puzzled about why we are now being asked for an additional increase in funding for a measure that we were told was budget-neutral.

The issue before us is indeed one of supply. It is a question of whether we think that our constituents’ money is being well and wisely spent. Do Members believe that, in our current financial circumstances, we should find more resources to pay for, among other things, high commissioners’ entertainment allowances and additional staff for Members of the European Parliament? Is that really the best possible use for this money? Is it better to spend it on that than on the 13,000 nurses whose jobs we might otherwise save, or on 22,000 servicemen? I do not think it necessary to be either Eurosceptic or fiscally conservative to believe that there are better ways to allocate our finite resources. When all the Governments in Europe are cutting their budgets, it cannot be right for the EU bureaucracy to be expanding.

If we do not think that this is the best use we can make of our constituents’ tax contributions, our duty is clear: we should support the amendment and reject the increase. Our predecessors fought a long and bloody civil war to establish that only this House might raise revenue for central Government through taxation. We are the inheritors of a sublime tradition, but also of a heavy duty. It is not for any outside agency, either our own Ministers or overseas Commissioners, to tell us how to dispose of this nation’s resources. We shall make that decision guided by our consciences, and in the interests of those for whom we speak.

I respectfully seek to press the amendment to a vote. Others have signed it, and I hope that they will speak in its support tonight.

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[Chris Heaton-Harris]

That is a good question. I am not convinced that it is possible. There is only one way to get rid of any European Commissioner, and that is to get rid of the whole lot. That involves a process that an individual constituent— [Interruption.] No, I did not. I was way too young to be there.

[Mr Dodds]

May I suggest one way to address the particular issue of getting rid of some of those people? The British people should be allowed a referendum on the question of our relationship with Europe. Instead of having a referendum next May on the alternative vote system, which is not what people want to talk about, should we not have a referendum on this issue, which everybody is interested in?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

The answer is yes.

I want to wind up by taking us back to the process that we are involved in. We are discussing the EU budget for 2011. Coming down the track is the EU budget for the next five or six years. If we do not make a stand now, we will be viewed as a pushover when we come to those negotiations next time round. We have done fantastic work. There has been no failure whatever by our Front-Bench team in already getting a bunch of countries to agree with what we are saying on the EU budget. I want the Economic Secretary to know that behind her she has so many friends wishing her to do well. We are just representing the British people in what they want as well.

PAYE Contributions

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

HMRC has faced many problems and challenges over recent years: a merger, coping with a complicated tax credits system, and a number of other issues. We need to be realistic about what can be done with our tax system—tax simplification is indeed important—and allow HMRC to focus on its key concerns and do the very important job that it has to do.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

Can the Minister outline the costs of this entire operation, and may I endorse the call for people who have underpaid to have the opportunity of face-to-face meetings if there are big demands on them, so that their cases can be heard properly? Can he indicate whether interest will be paid on top of the money to be repaid to those who have overpaid?

[Mr Gauke]

On the last point, yes, interest is applicable and a statutory duty. We are not in a position to assess the costs to HMRC. It is worth putting the matter in perspective by saying that most people have had their tax calculated accurately through the PAYE system, and that more will receive repayments than will have to pay extra. People should wait until they receive their letters. It is worth pointing out also that the problem of underpayments has existed in previous years, and many hundreds of thousands of people have had to repay tax through the PAYE system, so the phenomenon is not entirely new, although the scale is somewhat greater now.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

I was coming on to talk about the impact on incomes. The Red Book is quite explicit about that, and has some very helpful tables. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman gets a copy for his greater interests, as those tables make it very clear that the more one earns, the bigger will be the negative impact on earnings. As the Chancellor himself said, in that sense this is a very progressive Budget: he has shielded people on low incomes from part of the impact, and made those on higher incomes carry more of it. Although the hon. Gentleman represents a place with more people on lower incomes, they will be relatively protected.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

The right hon. Gentleman listed a number of measures that the Chancellor is taking to promote the private sector. I am sure that he will agree that one of the most welcome proposals is to reduce the volume and complexity of regulation. However, does he accept—I am sure that he will—that a lot of regulations come from the EU? How can we grapple with the extent and complexity of regulation if a lot of it emanates from somewhere other than Whitehall?

[Mr Redwood]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we have much less power to reduce or improve regulation from Brussels than we do with what is homespun. However, so much crass and foolish regulation has been put on British businesses over the past decade by the home legislators—the then Labour Government—that we can get quite a long way by removing, amending or changing that. In the meantime, we need to summon up a bit of courage and tell those in Brussels that they, too, should join in the process, as that would benefit their businesses as much as ours.

I have often said in this House that, from the point of view of running a business, reducing regulatory cost is a good way of offering something that is just like a tax cut without reducing the public revenue. Indeed, it is even better: not only is there no revenue loss, but public sector costs can be reduced, as the enforcement and monitoring costs of needless or over-the-top regulation can themselves be reduced. That means that businesses get a cash flow benefit, and that there is a reduction in the costs of Government.

The previous Government regulated too many things, and they did so too much and too often. They often regulated in a way that made things worse rather than better. We often found ourselves opposing them, even though we did not disagree with their aims. Like them, we wanted people to have nice lives and decent jobs, and to be free from risk in the workplace and so forth, but we often found that the regulation that the former Government proposed was very expensive and did not achieve the required result.

A tick-box culture means that people get very good at ticking boxes and writing memos, but that they do not manage in the proper way. A factory can be made less safe if the process is merely bureaucratic. Instead, the notion that safety comes first, second and third must be inculcated in all the senior people in that factory. They must manage safety intuitively, as ensuring that a workplace is safe cannot be achieved by tick boxes, inspectors or regulators.

Safety must be inherent in every workplace, and what we can do is to set a tone by saying that it matters above all else. We can have laws at a high level on safety but we need not go into as much detail as the previous Government did. Their approach often made things worse, and much more expensive.

The most important table in the Red Book can be found on page 45. It is one that we must discuss and understand, as it sets out the expenditure patterns for the forthcoming period of Government. The information in the table will come as a pleasant surprise to many neutral people outside the House, although it may worry Labour Members, who seem to be in denial about it. The table shows that total expenditure in the last year of the Labour Government reached £669 billion, and that expenditure will rise steadily to £737 billion by 2014-15.

Economic Affairs and Work and Pensions

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I have given way a great deal, and there are Members on both sides of the House who want to make their maiden speeches.

Let me say this to Labour Members: their response in this debate and in Treasury questions is pretty striking. The credibility of our country is put at risk by their borrowing decisions, and they do nothing. Higher debts threaten higher interest rates, and they do nothing. Every single measure that we have taken they oppose. They sign up to every pressure group complaint. They agree with every trade union protest in order to gobble up votes in their leadership contest. They now find themselves in the ridiculous position whereby the reductions in spending for this year are applauded by the G20 but opposed by the shadow Chancellor who used to attend it, and our clear commitment to accelerate the reduction in the deficit is supported by the US Treasury Secretary but opposed by the shadow Chief Secretary. Let them lurch off leftwards into the comfort zone of opposition, while the rest of us work together in the national interest to fix the problems that they left behind. Let me explain how we propose to do that.

Alongside other measures to support the recovery, the Budget on 22 June will set out the overall mandate for bringing the deficit under control, against which the Office for Budget Responsibility will judge the Government’s fiscal policy in future. It will set the overall envelope for spending, but it will not allocate spending between Departments. That is what the spending review will do this autumn.

Today I am placing in the Library of both Houses the document that explains how the review will work. The shadow Chancellor complained that he received the document only as he was coming into the Chamber. That was about an hour before I used to receive any document from him in the debates in this place.

Given the scale of the spending reductions required, the review needs to be quite different from any that this country has seen in recent years. For the past 13 years, spending reviews have not exactly been collegiate affairs—more of a one-way process. The Treasury told Departments what they were getting and precisely what they would do with the money—no room for innovation, no acknowledgement that some of the best ideas for doing things differently might come from the front line and not from the centre. The result of this top-down, centre-knows-best approach was falling public sector productivity and that large budget deficit—less for more. We cannot afford to continue in that direction.

As has been said in the Chamber today, we need to look at Canada and its experiences in the 1990s, when it too faced a massive budget deficit. It brought together the best people from inside and outside government to carry out a fundamental reassessment of the role of the state. They asked probing questions about every part of Government spending. They engaged the public in the choices that had to be made, and they took the whole country with them. That is what we will seek to do. We are committed to carrying out Britain’s unavoidable deficit reduction plan in a way that strengthens and unites the country.

The spending review will be guided by the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility. It will deliver on the Government’s commitment that health spending will increase in real terms in each year of this Parliament, and we will honour the promise that we as a British people made to the developing world on overseas aid. It will limit as far as possible the impact of reductions in spending on the most vulnerable in society and on those regions heavily dependent on the public sector. It will protect as far as is possible the spending that generates high economic returns so that we build the economy of the future while cleaning up the mess of the past.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

The Chancellor mentions those areas heavily dependent on the public sector and the impact on different regions of the United Kingdom. I welcome that commitment, but in order for it to be real, as opposed to simply rhetoric—he talks about the Finance Ministers quadrilateral meetings discussing the spending review—will there be a robust resolution mechanism, so that it is not just the Treasury that decides what happens with regard to the devolved Administrations, which, after all, have their own independent administrations, budgets and economic settlements?

[Mr Osborne]

The devolved Administrations have to be part of the wider spending review. With the best will in the world, we cannot let the three devolved Administrations simply determine what they will spend, particularly when most of them do not have significant tax-raising powers, but I give the hon. Gentleman the commitment that we will engage in an open and frank way and that we will listen to the concerns from Northern Ireland. I am well aware that one of the big challenges in Northern Ireland is how we can stimulate the private sector in Ulster, and we want to work with him on that. As I am sure he knows, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has some ideas in that area. We will engage not just with the Administration in Northern Ireland but with the Scottish Government and the Welsh Assembly and its Administration. For us, this is genuinely about trying to bind as many people as possible into a collective discussion which I hope other Opposition parties will be part of, even if the main Opposition party does not want to be.

Let me explain to the House how the review will work. First, we will build on the in-year savings that we have already made in order to drive for efficiency and value for money. We are creating a new efficiency and reform group at the heart of Government, which brings together a variety of bodies that are separate across Departments in order to try to bring to one place expertise on renegotiating contracts, maximising collective buying power and the like. We will ask for administrative spending in central Whitehall and quangos to be reduced by at least a third. Each Secretary of State will appoint a Minister with specific responsibilities in their Department over the next three months for driving that value-for-money agenda across their Department, and we will place a new obligation on public servants to manage taxpayers’ money more wisely by strengthening the role of the departmental finance director.

Government Spending Cuts

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Both the Chancellor of the Exchequer and I have rejected proposals that have come forward from officials and others to make cuts when we believe that those would endanger either the key front-line services that all of us want to protect, or people on low incomes. All of us know that the decisions that we take to get on top of the public sector deficit that we have been left will be increasingly difficult, but in the spending review, in the Budget and in the next spending review our minds will always be the need to protect not only those front-line services, but those people in our society who would otherwise be most vulnerable to the action that we must take to deal with the public sector deficit that we have inherited.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I welcome the Chief Secretary’s commitment to making statements first to the House so that Members can find out here, rather than reading them in the press or hearing them on television. I welcome also his statement that the devolved Administrations will be able to defer cuts until next year if they so wish. In Northern Ireland we are already making 3% year-on-year efficiencies and budgets have been set. May I make a plea to him to ensure that in future Treasury Ministers treat Ministers in devolved Administrations with respect? As a former Finance Minister in Northern Ireland, I know that under the previous Government there was not genuine dialogue but diktat from the Treasury, to the cost of the devolved Administration. Will the Chief Secretary ensure that there will be such a dialogue in future?

[Mr Laws]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments. We are giving that flexibility to the devolved Administrations, although I say to them that it is important that they start to make the savings as soon as possible; if they simply wait until next year, they will find it more difficult to make the adjustment. I make an undertaking to the hon. Gentleman that the Treasury will remain open to discussions with all the devolved Administrations, to make sure that their concerns are properly taken into account.