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Future EU Finances and Own Resources

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his helpful intervention. Governments of both colours talk about exports rather than about the balance of trade. The concept of exports net of imports is very different from that of exports alone. Exports increasing by 1 or2 per cent. a year might sound splendid, but if imports are increasing by 5 per cent. a year at the same time, it would create a big deficit, which would not be particularly advantageous. We should look at trade balances, rather than simply at exports. That also says something about the level of a country’s currency, relative to other currencies. One of the reasons why I believe that we should retain our own currency is that it enables us to have a sensible macro-economic policy and to adjust our currency to an appropriate level. That is necessary for trade. As I was saying, we were guilt-tripped into the decision to go for this budget. It was suggested that, without agreement on it, we would somehow deprive the less fortunate newer member states of the European Union, but in fact the people who went laughing all the way to the bank afterwards were the rich countries that benefit most from the common agricultural policy. The full CAP benefits do not accrue to the newer member states, because they are being tapered in over several years. So the CAP budget is still going to the richer member states that have larger agricultural sectors, such as Denmark, Ireland and France. Those countries arguably have higher living standards than ours; they are certainly very prosperous. And good luck to them—I am very pleased that they are, but we should not subsidise them to the disbenefit of the poorer member states of the European Union. My final point about net contributions has perhaps already been made. Our net contributions have multiplied substantially in the deal and, according to calculations from Global Britain, we will contribute net more than £10 billion a year for the next seven years. If that money was simply going to the poorer nations of Europe, there might be an arguable case for providing it. However, it is not, and £10 billion is a significant sum. It is roughly 12 times the deficit in the NHS this year and 10 times more than we would have to pay for free long-term care, in which I passionately believe. Such a sum would enable every pensioner in Britain to have a £20 a week increase in the basic state pension. Although £10 billion as a proportion of GDP may not be that much, it is a lot of money if one considers it in terms of what it could provide. If we reduced our net contribution to a level that was appropriate to help the poorer member states of Europe on a moral and socialist basis, that would be fine. However, our net contribution is too big and there are other things in our country that we should spend the money on, such as redistribution to the poor. We still have significant poverty in Britain, particularly among the elderly, and I would like to see an increase in the basic state pension that could be paid for by cutting our contribution. There are better things that we could do with our money. In short, we still have to campaign for the abandonment of the CAP and the common fisheries policy and for structural fund spending to be used to redistribute income to the poorer member states, and we should let them decide what to spend the money on rather than having that determined in Brussels. The aid budget should be repatriated and, in future, we should focus on redistributing simply according to the relative degrees of poverty and prosperity in the European Union. That is the way forward for a friendly, co-operative and truly internationalist Europe.