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European Union Bill

Well, my Lords, they are quite important. Some £8.3 billion per annum is sent in cash to Brussels, which is £23 million a day or 750 nurses, teachers or policemen thrown away every day at £30,000 a year each. Yet we are struggling to cut the same amount from our own public expenditure. Secondly, there is really no such thing as EU aid or subsidies to us. For every £1 they send us, we have given them £2.10. Then we are borrowing millions more to bail out the euro, which we might not get back. Every family in the UK spends £1,000 more on food than it would if we were not in the EU. Then the Treasury has estimated that overregulation from the EU costs up to 6 per cent of our GDP, or £84 billion a year—the equivalent of £1,400 per person. There is no doubt that this handicaps our exporters worldwide and would hit the City and its tax revenues hard. As I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, all this is against the background that only 9 per cent of our GDP goes in trade with clients in the EU, while 11 per cent goes to the rest of the world and 80 per cent stays in the domestic economy. Yet the whole 100 per cent of our economy is hit by the diktats from Brussels. No wonder the Government refuse a cost-benefit analysis on our membership. The Daily Express campaign and other campaigns have made the British people see that Brussels interferes in every aspect of their lives—immigration, rubbish collection, post offices, light bulbs, car premiums, working time, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, our fishing industry, financial supervision and so on. Governments of all persuasions have for years dismissed how much of our law is imposed by Brussels, with the House of Commons and your Lordships' House irrelevant. However, the people are now beginning to understand it and they do not like it. To cap it all, none of what I have just mentioned can be changed without the unanimous agreement of all 27 member states. That is why so many of us say that the only way out is by the door. Could I conclude by saying—