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European Communities (Finance) Bill

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. I can see that the Minister, if he ever gets bored with what he is doing, has a whole new potential career ahead of him—coming in here on a Friday morning and giving the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) a break. I am extremely grateful to my right hon. and hon. Friends for the self-restraint that they displayed, ensuring that we are able to debate new clause 1. I shall seek to be very brief and not to rehearse any of the arguments made in the stand part debate. The new clause is genuinely designed to help the Government by re-injecting a bit of backbone into their negotiating position. It would delay the implementation of this change in the own resources decision until satisfactory completion of the promised review of the European Union. It makes explicit the conditionality that the Government claimed was the basis of their final negotiating position. In the course of the previous debate, the Chief Secretary said that nothing was agreed until everything was agreed. I would suggest, however, that if the new clause were incorporated into the Bill, nothing would be agreed until everything is done. It is about ensuring that what was promised to be done at Brussels in December 2005 is, indeed, delivered. We have already seen that the Government did not go into the negotiations on the basis of having to give away the rebate in order to secure enlargement. That is a spurious argument. What we have emerged with at the end of the negotiations is nothing but the promise of a review. We must now ensure that the promise of the review is turned into a reality. The Chief Secretary told us earlier that defeating the Bill or substantially amending it, as new clause 1 proposes, would create a political crisis in the EU. I see no reason why that should be the case. If everyone has acted in good faith, our EU partners will know that our Prime Minister gave away a large part of our rebate because he had secured a commitment to a fundamental review—with no red lines and no holds barred—of the EU budget. Presumably, our partners entered into that commitment in good faith. There is no reason whatever why they should find it strange that this Parliament wants to ensure that that review indeed takes place, that it is meaningful and that its outcome is, at least as judged by the Treasury, satisfactory to the UK. This is not an anti-EU position, but a pro-British position. No other Government in the EU believe that there is a contradiction between being pro-EU and being pro their own national interests.