European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Risby and Lord Willoughby de Broke

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. Perhaps I may disagree rather gently with the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, who said that a transfer of money is not a transfer of power or competence. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said something similar, I think, at Second Reading—I have rather lost track of whether it was Second Reading or the first, second, third, fourth or fifth day of Committee. I disagree. The noble Lord has taken net figures. I prefer to deal with gross figures—our gross contribution is something like £15 billion. After all, if you are a taxpayer, you do not say, “I am only paying 10 per cent tax” if you are paying 50 per cent, 40 per cent or 20 per cent tax just because you are getting roads or police services; you are paying the headline tax.

We pay a lot of money to the European Union. We get some of it back in the rebate, which was halved by Tony Blair, and we get some of it back as contributions to the CAP and the cohesion funds. All those funds come back with an EU label on them. I give an example as a farmer. I am in the Highland stewardship scheme and I continually get letters from Defra saying that it is going to change the timing of the payments because it conflicts with EU rules or that I cannot plant this or that because the Commission has told us that we cannot. That demonstrates to me very clearly that a transfer of money to Europe gives that amount of money’s worth of power to Europe to tell us what we should do with it. It sends it back to us with an EU label on it telling us how we may spend that money. That seems to me an incontrovertible demonstration that a transfer of money is a transfer of power.

People deserve a referendum on whether all this money should continue to be given away. I am not sure why we have set the limit at £10 billion. It sounds very high to me; I would put it much lower than that. The British people should surely be given a say in this vital matter of supply, because, after all, it is their money that is being supplied. Therefore, I strongly support my noble friend’s amendment.

[Lord Risby]

My Lords, I apologise for arriving in your Lordships’ Chamber a few minutes late; I was unavoidably detained. I think that the Committee should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who has underscored something which causes huge concern to the people of this country; that is, the spending patterns within the European Union and the lack of accountability. In that sense, he is entirely correct.

The Bill sets out that a referendum would be necessary if there was a proposal for the veto which covers the multiannual budget—the seven-year budget—to be removed. That financial perspective is crucially important given all the various spending envelopes contained in it. Of course, the previous Government gave up the veto on the annual budget.

It is right that people have been concerned about the proposal recently for a 4.9 per cent increase by the Commission, which is absurd. It has got nothing to do with irrational newspaper headlines; it is a fact that there is austerity in all parts of the European Union and this has to be reflected in what is proposed by the European Commission. It has led the Prime Minister of our country to make this point clearly and I hope that, in due course, as it is further examined by the Commission and the European Parliament, it will be dealt with.

We can all be grateful for underscoring the importance of the necessity for frugality. However, the Bill deals with transfers of power and competence, a point made by my noble friend Lady Nicholson. Funding of the EU is not part of the Bill and therefore the amendment is irrelevant.

On the point about fixing the sum of £10 billion, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, asked what the benefits were from membership of the European Union. Over the years, the Commission has been able to drive reform in many member countries which, for domestic reasons, found it very difficult to improve competition and undertake privatisation of their nationalised industries, and it has done so very effectively. It has been useful for national Governments to have that force available to enable them to do so and the Commission has driven forward the single market in that respect effectively—not perfectly but effectively. For us, as a trading nation, that has been a significant contribution to our own prosperity.

For many reasons the European Commission needs a budget—frugal and sensible, but a budget it certainly needs to carry out its functions.