EU Council

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, the Leader of the House, for repeating the Statement given by the Prime Minister in the other place.

Let me begin by echoing the words of the Prime Minister about the contribution of our Armed Forces in Afghanistan. On these Benches, as in the rest of the House, our thoughts are with those who have served our country and the families of those who have lost their lives. Britain’s commitment to Afghanistan will continue beyond the handover of Camp Bastion. We must continue to support the Afghan Government through both political and humanitarian aid as well as in our training mission. Every one of our troops who served in Afghanistan can take pride in both their mission and in what they achieved, and our whole country is proud of them. I also echo the Prime Minister’s words about Ukraine and support for its Government.

On climate change, we welcome the climate and energy package, paving the way for the global UN summit in Paris next year. What action will the Government be taking in the coming months to encourage other countries, particularly China and the US, to agree a more ambitious target, sending a clear leadership signal to all countries in advance of the summit next year? Specifically, why was the energy-saving goal watered down from the Commission’s recommendation of 30%? All opportunities must now be taken to strengthen these elements of the package over the coming months.

I turn briefly to the Ebola crisis in west Africa. The whole world has been horrified by the devastating scenes in West Africa, and our hearts go out to the communities that are confronting this threat on a daily basis. We welcome the UK’s efforts to help affected countries. We are proud of the work of our Armed Forces, our health professionals and our aid community. I welcome the fact that the Statement said that member states agreed to increase the deployment of medical and support staff in the region.

I turn to the EU budget change. The Commission’s handling of this matter has been cack-handed and unacceptable and, as the noble Baroness said, has caused consternation in a number of other member states. The urgent priority now is for the Government to pursue all diplomatic means to get the best deal for Britain. We are bound to wonder if they have done due diligence in their handling of what one might term a fiasco. The Prime Minister says that he was made aware of this matter only on 23 October, and the Chancellor said that he had no warning. However, that is simply not the case. These changes to the budget arise from changes to estimates of gross national income, or GNI. Can the noble Baroness confirm that the Office for National Statistics agreed to, and has been part of, the substantial and planned changes to GNI across Europe for the past two years, since 2012? Can she further confirm that the ONS stated publicly in May 2014 that these changes would impact on our budget contribution? It said in its press release:

“GNI … is used in the calculation of a Member State’s contribution to the EU budget”.

Clearly, the Treasury was aware of this. My right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition quoted in another place from a letter from the then Economic Secretary to the Treasury, the right honourable Member for Loughborough, who wrote to the parliamentary committee on Europe a full seven months ago on 11 March. In her letter she said that changes to GNI were going to take place in time for 2014, and wrote about the high priority that the Government were giving to addressing them.

So these changes were planned for a number of years, the ONS publicly declared that they would impact on our budget contribution, and Ministers knew about them and claimed that they were a high priority. Are there any further budgetary adjustments coming down the line that will affect any amounts due or owing—adjustments that are currently not in the public domain? I think that we deserve to know.

It is hard to see how the Prime Minister can maintain his assertion that there was no warning and that Treasury Ministers knew nothing about these changes. Surely the Treasury must have made its own estimates of the impact on the EU budget that would follow. The reason why this matters is that in our view the Prime Minister could have done much earlier what he did at the last minute on Friday when he called for a meeting of Finance Ministers and entered negotiations about this demand. I think we would all be interested to know how he plans to go ahead and sort out this fine mess.

It is clear that the Prime Minister spends all his time negotiating with his party about Europe, when what he should be doing is negotiating with our partners in the rest of Europe about a reformed Europe and getting a better deal for the British people in the European Union. It is the British people who are paying the cost for the Prime Minister’s focus on his party rather than working in the best interests of the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I got the thing from the office.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My noble friend was not in the Chamber. It is not appropriate for him to speak.