European Union Bill

Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, I was not going to speak to this group of amendments, but I have been provoked by the previous speaker. He seems to suggest that we are implying in these amendments that there will be circumstances in which we seek to hide behind amendments such as these in order to deal with circumstances of economic and monetary convergence. We should, however, look at the current reality.

I have just come back from spending two and a half weeks with some of our continental friends in the European Union. Even though I am a teetotaller, I spent a number of hours in a number of quite agreeable bars speaking to expatriate Brits there, among others. They are not complaining about the strength of sterling and the weakness of the euro; they are complaining about the exact opposite. They are complaining about how weak the pound sterling is and how few euros it buys them in what they had anticipated would be golden years spent in the sunshine. I recall, when I first became involved in buying a property in Spain some five years ago, buying euros at the rate of 65p to the euro. Now I have managed to sell my house in Spain, I was able to repatriate money at the rate of 89p to the euro. That shows that the euro has improved by 38 per cent vis-à-vis sterling. There is a serious point to this, because when we talk about the rising costs of our membership of the European Union, they are the rising costs of a budget that is denominated in euros.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes]

Does the noble Lord agree that, in view of what he said, it is somewhat surprising that the German economy is booming at the moment because of the weakness of the euro?

[Lord Tomlinson]

The euro might be weak in relation to some other countries, but it is certainly not weak in relation to the pound sterling. The pound sterling is doing abysmally in relation to the euro, and partly in consequence of that so is our budgetary contribution to the European Union, about which there are permanent complaints from Members opposite. Complaints are being made very merrily at the moment about what will happen if Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne fail to control the Commission with regard to the budget for next year, for which the aspirations are for an increase of 4.9 per cent. The 4.9 per cent is largely the product of the relationship of the pound sterling to the euro. We, and not just the countries in euroland, have a responsibility in that regard.

I think that your Lordships are becoming engaged in a rather tortuous argument. That started off with the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, who I think should be a worried man when he gets praise for what was the alleged excellence of his speech by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch. In his speech, he flipped over quite a number—