Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993

David Gauke Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

The debate has addressed both the Budget and our membership of the European Union, so I am grateful to be on my feet at this point, and not later.

Let me respond to some of the points that have been made. To come back to what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) about the numbers, it is important that the document is based on information that has been published in advance and that we do not produce a mass of separate information and documentation for the purposes of meeting this requirement.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) will be aware—indeed, he touched on this—the requirement goes back to the 1993 Act. We are complying with obligations in our domestic law to provide this information, and it is therefore right that we do so.

The point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone about our trade deficit with the European Union brings me to the wider issue of our membership of the EU. I know that he shares with me a belief in free trade, and in transactions where there is a willing buyer and a willing seller, both parties benefit from the transaction. The point I would make in the context of our membership of the EU is that, whereas 44% of our exports go to the European Union, only 7% of the European Union’s exports come to the United Kingdom.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham mentioned the contributions we make to the EU. It is worth pointing out that, thanks to the deal secured by the Prime Minister, our net contributions—whether in cash terms, in real terms or as a proportion of GDP—are in fact falling.

Let me turn to the remarks made by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris), who speaks as a shadow Treasury Minister. For the first time in the six years I have been a Treasury Minister, we have heard an apology from the Labour Front Bench for borrowing too much money before the crash. That is something the hon. Gentleman deserves some credit for, because, try as we might on many occasions, we never got one out of Ed Balls.

The hon. Gentleman criticised the Government’s record on borrowing, but let us be clear: had we stuck with the structural deficit that we inherited, by 2020 we would have borrowed an additional £930 billion over 10 years. It is also worth pointing out that in May 2010, the International Monetary Fund forecast the UK to have had the largest budget deficit in the G20 that year. Between 2010 and 2016, the UK is forecast to have reduced its headline deficit at the second fastest rate in the G7—it is second only to the United States. The IMF forecasts that the UK will reduce its net debt as a share of GDP by more than any other G7 country between 2015 and 2020. If the hon. Gentleman believes that the problem is that we are borrowing too much money, perhaps he could explain why, time and again, the Labour party has opposed every measure we have taken to reduce the deficit.

We have had a lively debate, and I hope the House will support and approve the motion.

Question put.