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Future EU Finances and Own Resources

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins). I am sorry that the Minister for Europe is no longer present, and has not been present for some time. When he opened the debate, we recalled that we were the main protagonists in the debates on the Maastricht treaty back in the early 1990s. He was a new Member of Parliament and the late John Smith gave him the job for the Labour party of dealing with the nuts and bolts of the treaty. I tabled about 150 amendments and, because in those days we did not have extravagant parliamentary devices, at least on the scale that we have now, we were able to force debates, and we did so resolutely. I pick out my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) as a veteran of those days, and many would say that we set out a series of arguments that have proved to be correct. By all accounts, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not consulted when the deal went through in December. I said that he had been passed a poisoned chalice, because the money has to be found from somewhere and I have already given the details of the considerable increase that has occurred since December. The European commissioner has made that increase public and, as the European Scrutiny Committee report demonstrates, it far exceeds the amount that the Prime Minister said that the United Kingdom and other member states would contribute. The sum is so significant that one might say that it smacked of massive incompetence and that he did not want the Chancellor of the Exchequer to know the full details. Let us consider the appointment of the hon. Member for Normanton (Ed Balls)—he was here at the beginning of the debate, and I am missing him now—to the position of Economic Secretary. He is an alleged Eurosceptic who has continuously put arguments in various publications and given indications to suggest that he is dissatisfied with the way in which the European Union is functioning, but he has been given a job of great responsibility. I say with respect to the Paymaster General that it is a great pity that the Economic Secretary is not replying to the debate. Just as in those days of the Maastricht treaty when I found myself in a considerable alliance with the late Peter Shore, who performed a noble service tothe House over many decades, I wondered whether the disagreements between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer may not, on close inquiry, turn out to be based on a difference of opinionwith regard to the European Union and its financial management. After all, it is the five economic tests imposed by the Chancellor, which reputedly came from some of the ideas of the new Economic Secretary, that laid down the basis on which we were not, to all intents and purposes, to go into the euro. I think that a deeper question lies at the heart of the debate: which way are the Government going to go in respect of the future financial management of the EU as seen through the eyes of the British Treasury? It has been badly burned and cannot afford to pay for the public services or to perform the functions that the EU has been given without massive taxation. There is, therefore, a deeper problem. It is a failed system—an undemocratic and unaccountable system—that we are debating. It is a system that has been rejected by some of the other countries. The financial management and economic management implicit in the Maastricht treaty is the basis on which the European constitution was defeated. Contrary to what was stated at the time, it was not simply because President Chirac had become unpopular; it was actually because the policies that were being pursued in respect of European Union treaties had made President Chirac so unpopular. That is why there were riots in the streets and why the French people turned on their own Government. They did so because of a sense of disillusionment. They were told that they were going to get a good deal and then discovered that they were getting an extremely bad one because of the massive unemployment that followed in the wake of the pursuit of European economic management and European directives, in particular with respect to the contract, which had to be abandoned. The Government wanted to make economic reforms and they could not. Angela Merkel is attempting to make economic reforms in Germany, but she cannot. The bottom line is that the whole of the EU is not merely creaking, but collapsing and imploding. The consequences are severe. The beneficiary of those policies is the far right. The Eurobarometer poll shows that the EU is even more unpopular in Austria than it is in the UK. There is a reason for that.