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European Affairs

I have taken a number of interventions, and I will give way to the hon. Gentleman later, if he behaves; that might be unlikely, but we will see how he gets on. As I was saying, a truly bizarre development has been the sight of members of the Cabinet returning to advocating the one measure that, as the hon. Member for Luton, North said, would have made matters even worse for this country: membership of the euro. Since eurozone interest rates have been held at lower levels than those of this country for many years, it is fair to assume that if they had been applied to this country they would have made the unsustainable boom in our housing market even worse, and since those interest rates have been cut more slowly than British interest rates in recent weeks, it is also fair to assume that membership of the eurozone would now be making our dramatic bust even worse. So while the Prime Minister's claim to have abolished boom and bust is already a matter of ridicule, it is clear that a boom-boost cycle in the British economy would have been exacerbated, rather than dampened, by eurozone membership. None of this has stopped the dear noble lord, Lord Mandelson, who seems to be taking over ever wider swathes of the Government's foreign and economic policy—the Foreign Secretary had better watch out on that score—from reminding the nation that the Government are committed to euro membership in future. Nor has it stopped some of the ““people who matter””, in the words of Mr. Barroso, the President of the European Commission, from telling him that Britain is warming to the euro. What makes this even more ridiculous is that the shockingly incompetent management of the nation's finances by the current Government means that Britain will soon not be eligible to join the euro, since our Budget deficit is ballooning way beyond the Maastricht criteria and our national debt is heading for a level that, if any of the massive off-balance-sheet liabilities of the Government are included, will take us outside the euro's entry criteria. Is it not a pretty damning summing up of this Government's conduct of our nation's affairs that they are reaffirming their dogmatic commitment to a policy that would have made matters worse, while bringing such ruin on this country that they would no longer meet the rules for implementing it anyway? That is now the Government's policy on the euro.