---

Future EU Finances and Own Resources

We should all be grateful to the European Standing Committee for forcing the Government to put this enormously important issue on the agenda this evening. We have heard a number of thoughtful and informed contributions to the debate. We began with the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who thought the budget was a good deal. As if to prove that he lives in a sunnier and happier world than the rest of us, he also thought that Europe was making progress on the Lisbon agenda. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) sounded a note of reality. He criticised the Government’s sell-out on the common agricultural policy in 2002. I agree that that concession hobbledthe Government’s negotiating position in the 2005 negotiations, to devastating effect. The hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) told us that he believed the EU budget was a running sore and called for the repatriation of aid policy, agriculture and fisheries from the European Union. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) spoke with huge insight on the issue on which he has spent so many years campaigning. In particular, he challenged Labour Members to vote against the Bill needed to put the new budget into effect. The hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), as we have just heard, protested at what he saw as flawed assumptions which have overstated Scotland’s income, with the resulting impact on its entitlement to regional funding. He launched a devastating attack on the record of the Liberal and Labour coalition in the Scottish Executive and its record on regional funding. The House heard about the history of the Prime Minister’s spectacular sell-out on the British rebate. In 1999, he told The Independent that the rebate was non-negotiable. On 8 June 2005, he reassured the House in the clearest terms:"““The UK rebate will remain and we will not negotiate it away. Period.”” —[Official Report, 8 June 2005; Vol. 434, c. 1234.]" Less than two weeks later, the rebate was merely"““an anomaly that has to go, but it has to go in the context of the other anomaly being changed away””." Hence, it was up for negotiation, but only alongside fundamental reform of the CAP. Then we had Commission President Barroso saying:"““At the beginning, our British friends said that they would not accept any change””—" that is, to the rebate—"““without radical change of the CAP.  Now, they’re not saying that anymore””." There was complete capitulation when the Prime Minister agreed to surrender £7.1 billion of the British rebate without a single change being made to the common agricultural policy.