EU Budget Surcharge

Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Lord Deighton

Monday 10th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deighton]

I thank my noble friend for putting, with force and eloquence, precisely the points I have been trying to make in response to the last three questions.

[Lord Tomlinson (Lab)]

My Lords, can the noble Lord explain exactly what the Treasury had been up to—it had been involved in all the calculations—and how it was that, after three months of negotiations, the Chancellor did not understand what it had been doing? The Chancellor also did not advise the Prime Minister before he went to Brussels, which is why the Prime Minister was caught on the hop. If we have not got just what we were going to get back in any case, can the Minister assure us that we are still going to get the rebate in 2015 and 2016, and that we have not merely already received it back as an advance?

[Lord Deighton]

I can assure the noble Lord that the rebate that we are discussing with respect to halving this payment is applied specifically to this payment. It is independent of other arrangements for the rebate.

EU: Budget

Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Lord Deighton

Monday 4th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deighton]

I thank my noble friend for congratulating the Prime Minister on the excellent deal he brought back. We accomplished our three main objectives, which were to restrain the size of the budget, to make sure that we kept hold of our abatement and to resist any new EU-wide taxes. We shrank the budget and shifted it away from the more traditional areas, such as the common agricultural policy, into growth-oriented funds. I agree with my noble friend that we are shifting towards a pattern of expenditure that is more consistent with the reformers among us.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, will the noble Lord accept that what we have here is a seven-year financial framework, but what really matters now is the annual budget year by year over the next seven years? Can he give an undertaking that this Government will pursue a system of zero-based budgeting in each of those seven years so that we can cut out budget lines that are wasteful and increase those budget lines which need to be increased rather than take this rather conservative approach of across-the-board cuts which cut the good as well as the bad?

Government: Economic Policies

Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Lord Deighton

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deighton]

I thank my noble friend for that excellent contribution. I will not comment on the timing of selling the gold. Hitting a market high is tough to do. I will refer to what I would call the “scissors of doom”, which is the graph I was first shown when I entered the Treasury, which shows that between 2008 and 2010 spending was heading north at a rapid rate while receipts were heading south at an equally rapid rate, a situation that we are now trying to recover through this period of fiscal consolidation.

[Lord Tomlinson]

Does the Minister agree that confidence in the United Kingdom is being illustrated by the way sterling is devaluing against the euro—the much derided euro on which we blame so many of our economic ills? If the medicine is so good, why is the patient looking so ill?

[Lord Deighton]

There are many positive signs. I do not think that the patient does look so ill. I refer to the extraordinary employment levels—the biggest increase in employment for the past 20 years. On the question of the exchange rate, the noble Lord is absolutely correct that sterling has recently weakened against the euro. The exchange rate has two sides: the strength of the eurozone versus the UK economy. What that exchange rate reflects is that many of the risks that have been confronted by the eurozone over the past two or three years are perceived by the market to be diminishing.