Multiannual Financial Framework

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Cash]

Absolutely. It is impossible to make any public expenditure—including our contributions to the whole of the public sector: health, education, local government, the lot—unless the money comes from reasonably taxed small and medium-sized enterprises. Yet the whole of the Commission’s paper—which is at the heart of the 2020 strategy and at the heart of why the Commission is asking for this increased amount of money, which it calls an investment for growth—contains only one reference to small and medium-sized businesses, in one line. That is the problem we are up against. We cannot give money to the public sector unless we get it from private enterprise on a reasonably taxed basis.

The Prime Minister’s letter continues:

“The action taken in 2011 to curb”—

“curb”: that is the word he uses—

“annual growth in European payment appropriations should therefore be stepped up progressively over the remaining years of this financial perspective and payment appropriations should increase, at most, by no more than inflation over the next financial perspectives.”

The situation was wrong then, and it has got worse since. That was in December 2011. We are now in October 2012, and we know what the picture is, and it is getting progressively worse. That is why we had to call for a reduction rather than merely what the Prime Minister describes as an

“increase, at most, by no more than inflation over the next financial perspectives.”

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend take some support from the fact that on 20 June our right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary told this House he thought reductions in the EU budget of 20% were “highly desirable”?

[Mr Cash]

Absolutely; that is a very good point indeed.

I would like to dig a little deeper into what this money is supposed to be used for. It is all set out in the papers laid before the House for the purposes of this debate. They talk about turning the EU into a “smart”—whatever that means—“sustainable and inclusive economy” delivering

“high levels of employment productivity and social cohesion.”

How on earth are they going to achieve that given the measures they think will produce growth? Almost every single aspect of what they want to deliver is based on increasing grants and subsidies, but not on asking where the money is coming from.

The money comes from our constituents. It comes from the taxpayer. It does not grow on trees. That is what they do not understand. Therefore, the entire strategy on which this multiannual financial framework is based is nonsense. It is an Alice in Wonderland fantasy, as I have repeatedly said when I have had the opportunity to meet the other 27 Chairmen of the national scrutiny committees. I have noticed that there is increasing awareness, too. The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) was with me only a few weeks ago, and he noticed the degree of response I was getting from the other member states’ national chairmen. They understood that they were in deep trouble.

The money does not grow on trees in Spain; that is why there are demands for independence from Catalonia. The money does not grow on trees in France or Germany either. The fact is that it has to be found.