Draft European Union Budget

John Redwood Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

Unlike the Opposition, who were prepared to sacrifice our rebate for some sort of illusory review of spending, we stand firm. It is one of our red lines. In the same way, we stand firm on the financial transaction tax. That is why we vetoed it. We have cut €500 million off the CAP budget this year, which is much more concrete than some review that cost us £10 billion.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Hoban]

I give way to my right hon. Friend, but then I must make some progress and allow others to speak in this short debate.

[Mr Redwood]

What would the member states that want a high budget say if the UK Government pointed out that public sector wages and benefits in Greece and Spain are having to be cut in cash terms because the EU will not cut its own budget? When there is so much waste and programmes that are not very important, one would think it was much easier and preferable to cut those.

[Mr Hoban]

My right hon. Friend needs to reflect on the fact that there are, crudely, two groups of member states: those that are net contributors to the EU budget, such as the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and France; and those that have no incentive to curb the size of the budget because they are net recipients. That is one of the reasons there was a tension in the Council debate on this year’s budget and, effectively, two blocking minorities: one if the budget settlement were too low and the other if it were too high. We are making the case across Europe that we need to curb spending and that the money is spent much better at home than through Brussels. We have a group of like-minded allies on that, although not all member states see it in the same way. I think that we need continually to send the message that there are better ways to boost growth in Europe than simply by spending more taxpayers’ money, whether it comes from Belgian, Greek or British taxpayers.

[Mr Redwood]

But they need to be educated, because in order to get money out we also have to put money in, so higher EU spending affects all member states adversely, not just those that make a net contribution.