EU: Financial Management

Lord Newby Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am not responsible for some of the curious terminology which the EU uses, but I believe that financial regulation is the term it uses in this context. The relevant issue about which the Government are concerned is reducing the administrative burden on how expenditure is handled, particularly at member state level. We are worried about some specific questions: the proposal, for example, that loans might be used by the Commission to purchase EU buildings, which is something that the Government oppose; and the question of introducing a concept of tolerable risk of error within the accounting framework, which we oppose. I said before but I will say again that we want to push for much greater transparency in how assigned revenue is used. A host of issues come under that heading, but I cannot be responsible for the terminology.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the UK Government had support solely from the Netherlands and Sweden for the declaration submitted to the relevant meeting in February. What was the reaction of the other 24 member states at that meeting? What are the Government doing not just, as it were, to lobby the Commission but to persuade other member states that what seems a sensible series of reforms should get wider support?

[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.