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Future EU Finances and Own Resources

No. I am about to deal with some of the wrong figures that the hon. Gentleman used. He made a dodgy start by using a briefing from the Open Europe group. The CAP will not, as he asserted, be between 40 and 44 per cent., but 34 per cent. of the total. He included the 9 to 10 per cent. of the budget that is spent on rural development and used for environmental and other benefits in rural areas, not farmers’ subsidies. The hon. Gentleman is wrong to say that the Treasury has changed the way in which we calculate payments. In the Budget and the Treasury White Paper on EU finances, we calculate EU payments in exactly the same way as has always been done. He said that the budget was increasing—but it is now for an EU of 25 not 15 countries. In the next financial perspective to 2013, the EU budget will fall to less than 1 per cent. of gross national income in the EU—the lowest level for 20 years. The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) spent most of her contribution conflating and inflating the popular myths about fraud in the EU. In 2004, fraud in the EU budget was £130 million. That is 0.1 per cent. Fraud accounts for 0.02 per cent. of the CAP budget and 0.4 per cent. of the budget for structural funds. The UK has been determined that EU funds should be properly and efficiently spent. The EU anti-fraud office has been heavily promoted and the UK was instrumental in setting it up. The UK strongly supported setting up the Commission’s internal audit unit on an independent basis. The hon. Lady speaks with experience, so I am sure that she agrees that few countries in the EU have championed the cause of bearing down on fraud more strongly than the UK.