Multiannual Financial Framework

Thomas Docherty Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I welcome the junior Minister of State and hope he will tell us where the senior Minister of State is this evening.

This has been an excellent debate and we have heard principled contributions from Members of all parties, who hold deep, long-held convictions about Europe and the direction of travel. Anyone who is aware of my view will know that I am the co-chairman of the all-party group on European reform and that I believe that Britain is better off in Europe but that the current organisation is not satisfactory.

To give an example, 1 January saw the introduction of a European-wide ban of battery eggs, for which the UK, under the previous Government, and many other countries had campaigned successfully. However, it became clear that a number of eastern and southern European nations would fail to meet the 1 January deadline. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee took evidence on the issue last year and, when we asked the European Commission what it would do if the UK chose not to allow these illegal eggs into the country, it said that it would prosecute the United Kingdom, which is an obscene and perverse position to adopt. Saying that it would prosecute a country for upholding Europe’s own laws shows that the Commission has got its priorities wrong.

The Minister discussed cutting structural funds, but I disagree. The solution, as explored by the all-party group, is that if we repatriated the structural fund powers and spent the same amount of money as we hand to Brussels, we would have hundreds of millions of pounds more to spend in Wales, Scotland, the south-west and the south-east.

[Conor Burns]

Given that the hon. Gentleman is going to vote in favour of an amendment calling for spending restraint, does he regret that his party’s Front Benchers did not follow that policy in their 13 years in government?

[Thomas Docherty]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman has not made it on to the Government’s Front Bench yet with that kind of devastating critique.

My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) said that we will be voting alongside people whom we do not get on with or whom we do not particularly like, but I have been informed by one or two Conservative colleagues that that occasionally happens in the Government Lobbies anyway. I look forward to seeing which Lobby the hon. Gentleman enters later.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is not a debate about whether we should be in or out of Europe? It is about the fact that, on the one hand, the British people have been told to tighten their belts and the Government’s borrowing has gone up, while on the other hand, the Government are leading us into a situation where there will be an increase, one way or another, in the EU budget. That is the real issue and it is not acceptable to the British people.

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend is correct. Whether people live in Coventry, Bournemouth, Tunbridge Wells, Ribble Valley, Dunfermline or Cardiff, education budgets, child care, housing budgets and defence of the realm are being cut, yet we are expected to hand more and more money to Brussels bureaucrats to spend on vanity projects that will then attack British industry and British farmers. The British public will not understand if Members of this House, who claim that they want the best for the British taxpayer and that they want to support British industry, do not vote according to their principles and their long-held consciences and allow themselves to be corralled by their Whips into voting for this coalition motion.

It is interesting that this is only the second time that we have seen a large Liberal Democrat turnout in the Chamber since the start of this parliamentary Session. The first time was when we debated House of Lords reform. That says it all about the quality of the motion. I urge hon. Members from all parties to listen to their taxpayers, British industry and their consciences and to vote for the amendment.