Eurozone Financial Assistance

Debate between Ian Davidson and Kelvin Hopkins

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I have not always agreed with our former Prime Minister, but I agreed very strongly with his position on the euro. Of course, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) might take a more sensible approach to those things, should he be appointed. I think he is something of an outsider at the moment, but Madame Lagarde has not been appointed yet. Let us hope that he still has a chance of the job.

As the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood said, Britain was wise to stay out of the euro. Because of that, we can flex our currency when needs must. Of course, during and after the crisis, we wisely depreciated our currency. Perhaps a bit more depreciation will help manufacturing and our economy. Countries that have their own currency, such as ours, can also choose their interest rates. Two vital components of any economic management system—the ability to flex the currency and control of interest rates—are given away when countries join a single currency. Even beyond that, there are fiscal policy controls. Countries would do well to retain all the components of economic management if they want to succeed.

When countries do well individually, they can do well collectively. Destroying the economies of EU member states or other countries does not help us in any way. Getting them back into some sort of order by permitting, encouraging or helping them to recreate their currencies, and finding an appropriate parity and interest rate for that currency, so that they can manage their economies for their needs, would raise demand for our goods. The shock absorber effect of different currencies would, over time—a fairly short time, I believe—make the economies of Europe work better singly and collectively. Therefore, the recreation of those currencies is in our interest.

[Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend have any idea why this Government are so keen on bailing out the euro when that was certainly not in the Conservative manifesto? Is this a case of the Liberal tail wagging the Conservative dog?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

That is one mystery that will no doubt be revealed when the 30-year rule is applied. We found out some interesting things about what happened in the 1970s under the Jim Callaghan Government recently, so perhaps we will know what is happening now in 30 years’ time. I know no more than my hon. Friend about why the Government do not take a more sensible line, as is proposed in the motion.

Court of Auditors 2009 Report

Debate between Ian Davidson and Kelvin Hopkins

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The evidence that we have seen so far is not very encouraging, is it? I must say that I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Member for Stone made the serious point that the Court of Auditors is not really a separate organisation in the sense that the National Audit Office is in Britain. I should like it to be much stricter. If it were stricter, it might reveal even more irregularities and fraud than it does now, and might bring the European Union into even greater negative focus.

At the end of our last presidency, I urged the Government—from the other side of the Chamber—to call for the abolition of the common agricultural policy, which is the main problem in relation to the budget. We were given endless assurances about reform of the CAP at that time. Apparently, at the end of our presidency, the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, went to the European Union to call for its reform, if not its abolition, but what he came back with was no reform at all. As was pointed out by the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, he had given away a substantial proportion of our rebate. According to her, it amounted to some £10 billion over a five-year Parliament, or £2 billion a year, which is four times the sum that the Government plan to save by abolishing education maintenance allowance. Tony Blair gave that money away, and not one question was raised before he did it. Apparently he did it on the spur of the moment, hardly even checking with the then Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The Economic Secretary and others have mentioned the previous Government. I believe that the former Prime Minister, who is still a Member of Parliament—my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)—was on our side, in a sense. He prevented us from joining the European single currency despite immense pressure from Tony Blair and others, and it could be said that by doing so he saved us from worse difficulties.

[Mr Davidson]

Does my hon. Friend accept that, at this moment, there are more Members on the Government Benches who are in favour of joining the euro than there are on our Benches?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I do not see many Members on any Benches who are in favour of it at the moment, and I am greatly encouraged by that. I believe that we have a kind of common sense.

I should say to the Economic Secretary that I appreciate her sincerity. I believe that she will fight as hard as she can to support our interests, and the interests of the European Union as a whole as well. It is important for other countries as well as ours that we get these things right as much as we can. As the hon. Member for Stone has suggested, the Economic Secretary and everybody else faces serious inherent problems when considering these matters. It is the system.

The common agricultural policy is one of those problems. If it did not exist and member states simply managed their own agricultural industries, choosing to subsidise where they thought appropriate, not where someone else thought appropriate, the system would be much better. The CAP will cause more difficulty, because when it comes into full effect in respect of the new member states, it will cost much more than anybody anticipated. That is because wages have risen in those countries, so the cost of subsidising agriculture in them will be much higher. There are ongoing problems with the CAP and we ought seriously to suggest to the European Union that the CAP should be abolished, by being phased out or whatever. Let us give notice that we want it abolished—let us say within the next five years, in order to give France time to adjust. That would save a lot of problems, as a range of difficulties in the budget would disappear.

Other areas of the budget have problems, too. The suggestion that I have made several times in the Chamber and in Committee is that we should get rid of the budget in its current form, which is about fiscal transfers. It is about transferring income or money from the more wealthy nations to the poorer ones; it is a redistribution policy. It does not work very well because of the formulaic way in which it is done, with some countries unfairly contributing too much and other countries unfairly receiving too much.

Let us suppose that there were no such thing as the CAP and all the other budgetary arrangements, and the European Union simply transferred a substantial sum to countries that needed it from countries that could afford to pay. For example, we might contribute 0.5% of our gross domestic product and Romania might receive 1% of its GDP. A lump sum would be handed over to the Governments of the countries involved and they would then decide how to spend that largesse. That would be more accountable because those Governments would be accountable to their own electorates. At the moment, no direct accountability is involved and we cannot do much to control the budget spending, but the member states themselves, with their own democratic Parliaments and Governments, could control that spending. That could be done in Britain at least and one hopes that that would spread to other countries.

I have suggested many times that instead of having this complicated arrangement of special budgets for all sorts of different things, we should have a system of a simple payment each year from the more wealthy countries to the poorer countries, in proportion to their living standards. So the wealthiest nations would give according to their wealth and the poorer nations would receive according to their need.