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European Communities (Finance) Bill

My Lords, the Minister asked me why I choose Switzerland. I do so, as I tried to say before, because it is a mature economy that is very similar in many ways to our own, although it is very much smaller, and because it has all the advantages of free trade and free movement of persons with the European Union but without the immense costs that afflict our economy for only 10 per cent of our trade. Ninety per cent of our economy does not even trade with the European Union, yet 100 per cent of our economy is afflicted. My second point is to end with a question: if the Minister really wants to clarify our position on everything that we have discussed this evening—the budget, the rebate; even the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, was in something of a muddle about what it might all mean—why does he not commission a simple, cost-benefit analysis that would explain to the British people in words of one syllable that even I could understand exactly where we are financially, and indeed constitutionally, in relation to this project? Why do the Government not do this? It can be only because they do not want the answer.