EU Draft Budget 2017

Peter Grant Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 General Committees

[Mr Gauke]

I am sure that it will not have escaped the hon. Gentleman’s notice that there were several meetings this time last week between the First Ministers of all the devolved Administrations, the Prime Minister and several colleagues, and I met the Finance Ministers on Monday afternoon. There is obviously significant interest from the devolved Administrations in these matters, which were discussed. Where the devolved Administrations sign up to structural investment projects under their current EU budget allocation prior to Brexit, we will ensure that they are funded to meet those commitments. It will be for the devolved Administrations to decide what criteria they use to assess projects, in line with the devolution settlements.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I have three questions, which I will ask together and allow the Minister to deal with together. First, following up on the answer that he has just given about consultation with the devolved Administrations, I did not hear him say specifically what discussion there has been about the EU budget. He has indicated what will happen once the EU budget has been agreed and allocated, but can he clarify what discussions, if any, there were with the devolved Administrations prior to the Government beginning the process of agreeing the 2017 budget?

Secondly, in his explanatory memorandum of 11 July, the Minister did not tell us whether the Government supported the Commission’s proposals. What he has said today implies that the Government supported them at that early stage. Can he confirm that and tell us when the Government came to that position? It seems to me that if it was the Government’s position before 11 July that they would support the Commission’s proposals at the first reading stage, they should have told the European Scrutiny Committee that, so I am interested to know when they reached that position.

Finally, the budget still has to go through a number of further processes. The Minister reminded us that, as often happens, the Council and the European Parliament have different views about what they want in the final budget. It appears from the Minister’s comments that the Government are looking for the Commission’s proposals or less—certainly not any more. Given that there is disagreement with the directly elected European Parliament, will the Minister give a commitment that this will be brought back again and will go through the full scrutiny process, and that any requests of the European Scrutiny Committee will be complied with before the Government commit to supporting either the European Parliament’s proposals or some compromise thereon?

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

I find myself in a strange position on two counts. I find myself facing a room of Conservative MPs, and I am the one who feels that he has to speak in defence of the UK Parliament. It is more than unfortunate that another substantial document coming out of the European Union—possibly the most important strategic document of the year—is not getting sufficient parliamentary scrutiny in this place from a Government who are taking us out of the European Union because they, or apparently the people, are so fed up with decisions being taken over there, instead of over here.

The irony is not lessened by the fact that year after year, these big, bad, evil, unelected bureaucrats in the European Commission put forward one set of proposals, and our directly democratically elected representatives in the European Parliament put forward another—and Governments go along with the unelected bureaucrats, and support the Commission’s proposals. The irony is therein; I do not attempt to explain it.

We should not look at this in isolation, because those of us who are members of the European Scrutiny Committee and anyone who follows the Committee’s work will know that there is a huge list of important issues that we have asked Parliament to debate, either on the Floor of the House or in Committee. On some of them, we have been kept hanging on for ridiculous lengths of time. The scrutiny of the comprehensive economic and trade agreement in the past week or two is simply the most recent and one of the worst cases of that.

I asked the Minister to give assurances that the European Scrutiny Committee would be given the chance to scrutinise the budget, because once it is decided, we are stuck with it. I am not saying that we should necessarily try to get everyone in the House of Commons to agree to every detail of the budget, but this is not a good way to demonstrate that the Government believe in parliamentary oversight of any European document, least of all one with such substantial financial implications.

I remind Members that the Government had these documents on 30 June, and it took 11 days for the Minister to produce an explanatory memorandum, which explained nothing and was not memorable. The memorandum effectively regurgitated a whole pile of numbers from the original documents, but it still took 11 days to do that. The European Scrutiny Committee then took two days to consider that; it had very little time to consider it properly. It has since taken 15 weeks for this debate to be called, and we are now told that there will not be time for further scrutiny before the process has to be completed.

I understand that there are pressures on parliamentary time—I certainly would not have been jumping up and down, demanding to be brought back in the middle of August for a half-day debate on this subject on the Floor of the House—but it frustrates and angers me that so much of the argument about the European Union was about decisions being taken in the wrong place when this Government, and, I have to say, previous Governments, simply have not played ball with Parliament’s own scrutiny processes. That has been a significant factor in making people believe that the lack of transparency is all Europe’s fault, when in fact much of the responsibility lies in this place.

My second major concern is that despite being asked twice about discussions with the heads of the devolved nations, the Government clearly have not discussed the budget with them. The Minister referred to the talks held last week. If I remember correctly, Nicola Sturgeon described the meeting as deeply frustrating and said that those who took part knew no more when they came out than they had when they went in. She did not say that it was a complete waste of time, but anyone who read her comments or those of the First Minister of Wales would have got that distinct impression. That does not show respect for other nations in the United Kingdom, or give any credibility to the claim that we are all equal partners.

I fully understand that EU relations are reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament and Government, but it is not good enough for the Government to fail to discuss these matters with the devolved nations simply because, constitutionally, they do not have to. We have not been given any assurance that there will be further scrutiny of these documents before the Government come to a decision, and they will probably support the unelected bureaucrats, rather than the elected MEPs. I was sorely tempted to vote against the motion, simply to put on record how unhappy I am about this, but I probably will not.

Finally, in his explanatory memorandum, the Minister helpfully converts the UK’s expected share of the total EU budget from euros to pounds. Our share is expected to be just over 13% of the total—about €20.5 billion. On the day on which the Minister wrote to the European Scrutiny Committee, sterling was worth about €1.21, so our share would have been just under £17 billion. Today, the pound is worth just under €1.11, so our share has gone up to £18.5 billion. Ironically, simply because of the collapse in sterling caused by the Brexit vote, it looks like the cost of us being part of the European Union next year will be £1.5 billion more than it should have been.

Hopefully, when summing up, the Minister will confirm whether the Government want to maintain the fiction that the falling price of sterling is somehow good for British taxpayers, because if sterling stays where it is, British taxpayers will spend £1.5 billion more on the European Union than we needed to. That, I suspect, is why the £350 million a week for the health service will never materialise, and the promises made will never be kept—because that money has evaporated. It is sitting in an offshore account belonging to some billionaire speculator by now. The Government have tried to tell us that the fall in sterling is somehow good for British business. I want to hear the Minister say whether he thinks it a good sign that the cost of the UK’s EU membership next year will be £1.5 billion more than it was when he wrote his explanatory memorandum.