EU Membership (Audit of Costs and Benefits) Bill

Debate between Oliver Colvile and Edward Leigh

Friday 26th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for promoting the Bill. This is an interesting debate. I am not sure that anybody could rationally oppose the idea of an independent cost-benefit analysis run by independent people. If somebody, including the Minister, wishes to intervene on me and deny the rational basis of that argument, I would be interested to hear what they had to say.

We had a debate about Europe yesterday. I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, because this is the third time this week I have wearied the House with my views: I spoke yesterday, I questioned the Prime Minister on Monday and I am also speaking today. However, this is such an important issue and, frankly, it is our job to be here, even on a Friday morning, to hold the Government to account. I make no apology for that.

You were present for some of yesterday’s debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I recommend that you read it in its entirety in Hansard, because some very interesting arguments were made. I knew that my hon. Friend was going to promote this Bill today, so I asked the Foreign Secretary directly why we could not have an independent cost-benefit analysis of our membership of the EU so that we could decide whether we should stay. He said that that would not be possible because there were so many uncertainties involved in what leaving the EU would amount to. That is an interesting point of view, but it has not stopped many groups—I will refer to them in a moment—feeling that it is possible to have, or at least possible to make a decent fist of having, an independent analysis of what the decision either to remain in or to leave the EU might mean.

It is extraordinary that, while the Government tell us, quite rightly, that this is the most important decision we will take in our lifetime, constituents are already writing to me, asking, “Please can we have all the arguments laid out?” Most people in this House know their views, but millions of people in the country want an informed debate and would welcome some independent analysis of what this most important decision would mean. Apparently, unless there is going to be an announcement today—I doubt that that is going to happen—we are not going to have an independent analysis.

The question we need to direct to the Minister, therefore, is whether the Government are going to produce their own analysis. He and the Prime Minister are completely honourable people—they would never, ever wish to deceive the British public—but they are arguing for a certain point of view. Therefore, civil servants produce documents that argue a certain case. As the Minister has indicated, the Government’s viewpoint is absolutely clear: under its rules, the civil service works according to Government policy. Government policy is that we remain in the EU, so civil servants will defend that policy and produce briefing papers, analysis and all the rest in terms of that policy. Of course, civil servants would not consciously lie or deceive in any way, but we want to know from the Minister exactly what analysis the Government intend to produce over the next four months, what form it will take and what will be the nature of its independence.

The question that I put to the Foreign Secretary was this. I said that during the years when we were in opposition, we accused Gordon Brown, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, of making assumptions before the Budget that were influenced—let us put it as gently as we can—by the direction in which he wanted to go. That is why we created the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is one of our foremost achievements, apparently. I agree that it is an achievement. The assumptions that lie behind the Budget are now in the hands of a genuinely independent body.

When I was Chair of the Public Accounts Committee during those years of Labour Government, the moment the Chancellor stood up and started his Budget speech, a messenger would deliver to me on the Back Benches a fat envelope containing all the assumptions on which the Budget was based. The trouble was that they were assumptions written by civil servants who were working towards Government policy—the policy of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. That is why we created the Office for Budget Responsibility. The question that I put to the Foreign Secretary, which he did not answer and which I repeat to the Minister, is: if this is the most important decision that we are going to make, why can we not depute the OBR to produce an analysis?

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has suggested a different format. Because this is a private Member’s Bill, it is, as we know, for all sorts of reasons unlikely to become law, but he has at least raised the question. It is now incumbent on the Minister to answer my hon. Friend. I am sorry, but I think that my hon. Friend’s creation is unwieldy, calling as it does for us to find an equal number of people who are in favour of leaving and of remaining. There may be perfectly justifiable arguments for that, but the Government already have independent bodies, such as the OBR and the National Audit Office, which could do the work. The NAO, which is well respected, would perhaps not be expert at dealing with issues of sovereignty, but it could certainly deal with other issues mentioned by my hon. Friend such as “burden of regulation”,

“economy (including consideration of public expenditure and receipts”

and “competitiveness and ability”. The Government already have in their hand a body or bodies that would be capable of producing such an analysis.

It is deeply worrying that Ministers who have decided to campaign to leave the EU are denied any civil service briefing on the matter. They are immediately thrown into purdah this week, and yet Ministers who are campaigning to remain in the EU have the full benefit of the civil service, which can apparently for weeks churn out propaganda. I do not use that word in a derogatory sense; propaganda simply means putting one’s point of view forward. The situation seems to me to be fundamentally unfair. Surely, the British way of doing things, particularly in referendums, is that we are fair.

We had a vote on purdah in the autumn, and my hon. Friend and I got into a bit of trouble for voting in favour of it, but we thought it was important. We thought that once the referendum campaign started, the Government should not be able to use its machine—its civil service—to argue for a point of view, because that does not happen in a general election. Perhaps we will learn from the Minister today when that purdah will actually start. Obviously, the Government are not in purdah at the moment. Civil servants are fully briefing, and the whole machine is churning out papers all the time.

All this is important because the referendum is supposed to bring a degree of closure to this subject, is it not? To do so, it must be seen to be absolutely fair. It is very important that both sides of the arguments are properly aired. Speaking for myself, if the British people decide by 55% to 45%, or whatever the figures are, to remain in the EU—after all the arguments have been properly put, and the no and yes campaigns have spent broadly the same amount of money—I will just have to accept that point of view.

However, this is a very complex area and the whole nature of the Government’s case is that leaving is all too risky. I made this point yesterday, but it is an important one: we should bear in mind that the Government are not approaching the referendum campaign with the sense of a great visionary movement in favour of the EU. The Prime Minister is saying, “Look, I am as great a Eurosceptic as you are, but I’m sorry, it’s all too risky.” When he says it is all too risky, he presumably means the costs of leaving in terms of national security, which is mentioned in the Bill, and particularly the very detailed debate on our competitiveness, the decisions of European Council meetings and the rest of it.

I want to emphasise that I see no rational argument against the Government commissioning a genuinely independent cost-benefit analysis. As I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), our membership of the EU means paying a subscription of £10 billion a year in order to have a £70 billion a year deficit with the EU. Normally, when someone pays a subscription to a club, they do so to have a benefit: they are prepared to pay the cost because they get something back. Frankly, given that there is a deficit of £70 billion—I agree that it exists now and will almost certainly remain if we leave the EU, because of the strength of German engineering products or French food and drinks products and all the other reasons—that is quite a big subscription to pay for it.

We want an independent study. To go back to yesterday’s debate, the Minister for Europe said in his summing up, “I’ve sat through this debate, and those who want to leave the EU have not given any sense of their vision.” That is quite true, and it is incumbent on us—it could be done as part of such a study—to give the people and the House some sense of where we want to take the nation if we leave the EU. I accept that argument—the Minister for Europe kindly added that he said that “with the exception of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough”—and I tried to give an alternative vision yesterday.

Such alternative visions need to be tested. I just have a point of view—I believe it is reasonable, but other people may say it is a prejudice—but there is no point my standing up in the House of Commons and articulating my alternative vision if there is no independent analysis of it. That is surely what the British people want and demand. I am asking them on 23 June to take the risk of leaving, and they therefore have the right to come back to me to ask such questions.

If we left the EU, I believe it would be quite exciting—I represent a rural area—to reclaim control of the common agricultural policy. In that context, I recommend the speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to the Oxford farming conference. He made a detailed analysis of what leaving the EU would mean for farming policy. He made the point that although food and agriculture is a huge and massively important industry—it employs more than 3.5 million people and accounts for £85 billion of GNP—agriculture policy is entirely determined by the EU. On that, this House has very little, or virtually no, independence from the EU. He was putting forward his view and arguing that alternative subsidy arrangements could be made. For instance, he argued that we should broadly spend on subsidies what we are spending now, but create a different subsidy system. He argued that we could divert more agricultural subsidies away from lowland farming to hill farmers in difficult farming environments.

I have been trying to wrestle with an understanding of farming policy for the 30 years I have been in this place. It is immensely complex, but again we have had virtually no detailed debate or analysis to inform our farmers on how they should vote. This is desperately important to them. There are hundreds of farmers in my constituency and tens of thousands of farmers throughout the country who want an answer, because they, for better or for worse, depend on the subsidy system.

[Oliver Colvile]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that it is not only the farming industry but the fishing industry that needs to be taken into account?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I will come to the fishing industry in a moment.

Farmers are genuinely worried. I suppose the Government have got quite an easy task. They can just say, “Don’t worry. You don’t like the present system. You’ve been complaining for years that it is regulatory and burdensome, and that for years you were paid by the EU to rip out hedges and now you’re paid to put them back. You have to spend all your time not out on the land but sitting in your office in your farmhouse dealing with farming subsidies. It’s regulatory, burdensome, late and difficult but,” I suppose the Government would argue, “at least you are supported.” There is an implication on the part of the Government that if we were to leave the EU, the subsidies would vanish.

The Vote Leave campaign is absolutely explicit about that. I am absolutely explicit about it and I give this pledge. One should be quite careful what one says on the Floor of the House of Commons, but if we leave the EU the level of subsidy to the farming community will remain exactly what it is now. That is a pledge. I cannot give a pledge on behalf of the Government, but I cannot believe that anybody would resile from that. We have no idea. We have no independent analysis. We have had no real attempt, apart from by a few right hon. and hon. Friends, at detailing how the subsidies would change.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) mentioned fishing, which is even more important. I referred to this subject yesterday. I think I was the only one to mention it. This was the great debate we had on Europe this week with the Foreign Secretary and the shadow Foreign Secretary: we were limited to very short speeches and I had time to say perhaps one sentence about fishing. There was no detailed analysis yesterday of what leaving the EU would mean for our fishing industry, yet it is of absolutely massive and crucial importance.

People forget that in the final days of the negotiations conducted by Mr Heath, way back in 1971, he was worried that the talks were stumbling. In the final days, he handed control of our fishing industry to the European Commission with disastrous results for the port of Grimsby, which is close to my constituency, and for our entire fishing industry. I would argue that if we left the EU, it would be extraordinarily exciting to reclaim control of our fishing fleets and fishing industry, given that we are an island and that we sit surrounded by some of the most productive fishing grounds in the world. Again, there has been virtually no intelligent, thorough and informed debate of how we could manufacture or create an alternative fishing policy.

[Oliver Colvile]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Of course. I give way to somebody with far greater expertise in this area than me.

[Oliver Colvile]

The Plymouth marine laboratories were set up—I think in 1870—and they analyse whether we are overfishing our seas. If my hon. Friend wants, he could come and talk to them, but most certainly he might want to give them a ring.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I would be delighted to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency. Perhaps I could sail there in my boat from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, where it is moored. But obviously we are deeply serious about this, because the last 30 years have been a traumatic experience for our fishermen. It is a matter of immense importance. Again, we need an independent audit.