EU: Membership

Lord Stoddart of Swindon Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord and, as I have already explained, the huge benefit from our membership of the EU significantly outweighs the budgetary contribution that we make.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that we run a consistent trade deficit with the EU of about £40 billion a year? Could he say in relation to our net contribution, given the extra £450 million agreed by the Prime Minister at the recent quarterly meeting—or perhaps the £900 million which we will have to pay if the European Parliament has its way—how much we will then be paying?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, in answer to the first part of the noble Lord’s question, 40 per cent of the UK’s trade goes to Europe, so it is a critical trading partner. On the potential increase of our budget contribution for next year, I should say that it was only thanks to the work of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister that the budget was put on to the agenda of the Council of Ministers and, thanks to the work he did with a number of other member states, the ridiculous proposal of a 6 per cent increase has been thrown out of court. The Council instead discussed the 2.9 per cent increase which we believed to be the absolute upper limit of what should be acceptable for next year.