EU: Financial Management

Lord Harrison Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

I am grateful to my noble friend, because he gives me an opportunity to refer to the joint letter in December, very much led by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, to which Germany, France, Finland and the Netherlands were also signatories. That talks about the need progressively to tighten up on and limit the growth of payments into the EU budget in 2012-13 and makes important observations about the necessity for growth in the EU budget through the next financial perspective to be limited. That is a forward-looking set of proposals to which a significant number of member states are already committed.

[Lord Harrison]

Has the noble Lord read the Court of Auditors report, which demonstrates that: there is a welcome downward trend in infringements; 99.9 per cent of the infringements are of an administrative nature; 80 per cent of the spending is by European member states; and the most guilty member state is the United Kingdom itself? That can be examined in the Comptroller's recent evidence to the Treasury Committee.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, it is the 16th consecutive year in which the Court of Auditors has been unable to give a clean opinion on the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions in the EU's expenditure, and that is an unacceptable state of affairs.