Peter Bone
Main Page: Peter Bone (Independent - Wellingborough)Department Debates - View all Peter Bone's debates with the HM Treasury
(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Miss Smith
We have a plan A, to which we are sticking because it is working—unlike the policies proposed by the Opposition, which have yet to emerge in any credible detail whatsoever.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
12. What recent estimate he has made of the level of the UK’s current account balance with the EU.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)
In 2010, the UK had a current account deficit of £49 billion. That deficit results from a deficits of £48 billion with the EU and of £1 billion with non-EU countries.
Mr Bone
That was a most incredible figure of a deficit of nearly £50 billion to the EU. Does the Minister agree that the Deputy Prime Minister is quite wrong to go around to the television studios claiming that the EU creates 3 million jobs for British workers when it is quite clear from those figures that the EU costs millions of British jobs?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend should bear in mind that the deficit on traded goods between the UK and the EU is £43.9 billion but that the deficit outside the EU is even larger at £54.7 billion. We should be encouraging businesses across the UK to invest more and to export more to places in the EU, as well as to Brazil, Russia, India and China. I encourage him to talk to businesses in his constituency and encourage them to export more to close that gap.