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European Communities (Finance) Bill

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable). Although we come from different sides of the argument, we have probably reached the same conclusions. In the final stages of today's consideration, I want to mention how unfortunate it is that so little time has been allowed to debate a Bill that will see £104 billion of taxpayers' money spent over the next few years. It is a great shame that this evening's debate was not allowed to continue until any hour. I have to have sympathy for the Chief Secretary, who battled hard, although I am afraid he has no support on the Government Benches. He did his best while batting on a very sticky wicket, defending the indefensible. He did not deny the fact that as from 2007, we are going to have a net contribution to the EU of £4.7 billion, which is expected to be £6.8 billion by 2011. That cannot be and is not a good deal for the British taxpayer. My most important point relates to what the Chief Secretary said at the very beginning of the debate—that the EU would implode if we did not agree to the Bill tonight. Let me quote him what Her Majesty's Treasury says about that:"““If any Member State fails to adopt the new Own Resources Decision by 31 December 2008 then the current Own Resources Decision (Council Decision of 29 September 2000: 2000/597/EC, Euratom) continues to operate until such time as the adoption process is completed, with the new Own Resources Decision then coming into force on the first working day of the month following the date of notification of the final adoption or ratification, retrospective to 1 January 2007.””" Her Majesty's Treasury says that the whole EU would not collapse. The budget would remain, but on the basis of the existing formula. The Chief Secretary could therefore quite happily have agreed to the new clause tabled from the Opposition Front Bench. That is a missed opportunity, which I believe the Government will rue.