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European Communities (Finance) Bill

I shall keep my remarks brief, because once again the Government are not allowing us proper time to deal with the matters before us—clause 1 and the very important new clause 1, which we hope will be moved shortly. However, I cannot let the Chief Secretary get away with the disgraceful arguments that he has produced this evening. The Chief Secretary first suggested that Mrs. Thatcher used to negotiate and reach compromises, and that that was entirely comparable to the negotiation, sell-out and giveaway that he has again announced to the House. Let us compare the two negotiations. Mrs. Thatcher went to a Community in which the other 11 countries had no interest in letting us keep more of our money. Any one of them could have vetoed her proposal that we should have a rebate. She managed to talk them round from 11-one down to 12-nil in favour, because she had to win by a unanimous vote. All that the current Government had to do when they went to Brussels was say, ““We have a veto and we are not going to give away what Margaret Thatcher so wisely and brilliantly won for the United Kingdom,”” but they could not even do that. They gave in under pressure and said, ““Oh deary me, no, it would be quite wrong of us to use our veto. We'd love to shell out €10.5 billion over the first period and much more over subsequent periods, because we now realise that we shouldn't use the veto and we're here to give in.”” The Opposition are delighted that the Chief Secretary gave way so much in this debate, but we are unhappy that Mr. Blair and others gave way so much when they completed mishandled the negotiations. Labour colleagues of the Chief Secretary are present who believe that the sterling equivalent of that €10.5 billion would be much better spent on public services, which they greatly revere. There are also those on the Conservative Benches, such as me, who believe that, in the light of all the money wasted in public services, that €10.5 billion should be given back to British taxpayers, who have paid all too dearly for the Government's inefficiency and their bad negotiations in Europe. The Chief Secretary tells us that we should regard the deal as a negotiating triumph, because although the Government gave away the veto that had been so brilliantly negotiated by a predecessor Prime Minister, they achieved a smaller rate of increase in the budget than the Chief Secretary apparently thinks we achieved 13 years ago. It may be that the Government achieved a smaller rate of increase, but what matters is that the budget increased so much in the early Labour years, after the end of the Tory years, that any increase would be unacceptable. The Chief Secretary cannot get away from the fact that the budget that he is recommending is massively higher than that which was recommended by Mr. Major. For that reason alone I cannot accept it, because it is too big a burden on British taxpayers. We then heard the myth, which the Government put about, that the proposal is essential for those countries in eastern Europe, which would otherwise be deprived. As my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) pointed out, however, enlargement was agreed without the new variant. If we had dug in and used our veto, enlargement would still have happened, but we would not have had to make a disproportionately large contribution to that increased spending in the territories entering through enlargement. Some of the other rich countries of western Europe should also have continued to make a bigger contribution relative to ours, for the reasons that my hon. Friends have already set out.