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do something about it? Unless somebody does something about it soon, there is not a lot of point in proceeding with this treaty, or any other European legislation.Sir Teddy Taylor : My hon. Friend is one of the most conscientious people attending these debates. I know that his heart is in the right place, but I appeal to him not to look for an answer in the Commission. It cannot be found there. I appeal to him not to look for an answer in setting up new Committees or new organisations. We have been through all that. I appeal to him, as someone who represents very fairly and adequately the interests of farmers in this country, to ask what on earth can be done about the common agricultural policy. The answer is, nothing. The CAP is getting worse and worse. The tragedy is that nowadays nobody talks about the fact that the food mountains are breaking all records, because they know that there is nothing that we can do about the CAP. We all know that the CAP is in worse trouble than ever before, so nobody wants to talk about it.
Mr. Walter Sweeney (Vale of Glamorgan) : My hon. Friend drew the analogy of a car going towards a cliff, unable to turn left or right, or to turn round and go back. Would not it be fair to describe this vehicle as one in which the accelerator is stuck down and that we in this country are required to chip in and load that vehicle, which has enormous petrol tanks, with a very expensive load of fuel in order to enable that vehicle to pursue its headlong pace towards the precipice?
Sir Teddy Taylor : How right my hon. Friend is. That is the key fact that we should think about. We are putting in more and more money and, as a result of Maastricht, there will be a lot more money going into the European Community. This year it amounts to £2.6 billion. I just ask those who sit on the Treasury Bench to think about what we could do with that money, if we had it. Let us take, for example, VAT on electricity and gas. It is terribly unpopular. Old people think that it is dreadful. We, sadly, on these Benches voted for it because the Government appeared to be going bust and we had to get some money from somewhere. If we did not have to make that contribution to the European Community, this VAT levy on electricity and gas would not be needed. We should have a lot of money to spare. That is what we must think about.
What would be the effect of having the European Community without any funding at all? Some of my hon. Friends are absolutely right when they say that we are being asked to put more and more money into it. My first question to the Paymaster General, because I know that he is one of the Ministers who will tell us the truth, relates to the fact that as a result of article 201 it was decided at Edinburgh, on top of all the resources going to the European Community, that there would have to be a new one--a fifth resource.
The Commission was asked to give its view of what this should be. This morning's papers tell us that a new EC tax on energy is being discussed which will result in electricity bills being put up by a further 20 per cent. Apparently, that is to be the first of the European Community's own resources, the one which will be a European tax. The papers say that the British Government are not very happy about it. If we go ahead with it and say to people that, on top of VAT on their electricity bills, there will be a new,
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extra Common Market tax of 20 per cent., they will be very angry and will probably lose even more faith in democracy.The purpose of the amendment is not just to raise a marginal argument about the proposed changes and the extension of EC spending, but to try to find an answer to the problems of the EC. My hope is that the Government will approve the amendment. I hope that they will, because they have been flexible in their attitude and have now agreed to back new clause 75, which was originally said to be a time bomb. They have now thought again about that. I am seeking to remove every single word in the treaty about European Community resources. That might persuade other member states in the European Community to ask themselves whether the EC would be better off or worse off if it did not have a single pound or ecu to spend and if it returned to its original concept, approved by the people of Britain in a referendum, of establishing a body of nations to co-operate on trade, friendship and related matters.
I do not seek to hide the fact that I was one of the "no" campaigners in that referendum and I have never had cause to regret my decision. In the horrendous mess we now face in Europe, with mass unemployment, with horrendous graft and corruption, with the ever-declining share of world trade and with unworkable and uncontrollable policies, there can be little doubt that everyone, with the possible exception of the Mafia, would be better off if the Brussels bureaucracy was deprived of all its resources. How is the money collected under article
Mr. Marlow : I am listening to my hon. Friend with interest and I am very keen to know what the effects of the amendment would be. My hon. Friend is aware that the treaty establishes something called the cohesion fund, which is a means whereby the Commission gives favours to people in return for support. My understanding is that the cohesion fund should not come into effect until ratification, yet I read last week that the cohesion fund is beginning to take effect already and that money is already being provided through it. Would the amendment stop that abuse ? As we have not ratified the treaty and as Parliament has not agreed to the treaty yet, it must be an abuse that money is being spent on something coming out of the Maastricht treaty.
Sir Teddy Taylor : Oh yes. My hon. Friend is so right. If he votes for the amendment, that abuse will be stopped. The cash should be cut off. What the Government could then do to save Europe would be--this is our answer--to have a Europe without any cash at all.
Mr. Cash : I am sure that my hon. Friend was not referring to me when he made that remark.
I refer to article F.3 of the treaty and I am sure that my hon. Friend will not mind my reading it out. The article says : "The Union shall provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives and to carry through its policies."
I hope that I am not pre-empting a point that my hon. Friend is likely to make shortly. That article comes under title I, "Common Provisions", which is being shoved through disgracefully by prerogative and which is not part of the Bill. It provides for the union to have the means necessary to attain its objectives. That is critical to the question of own resources. How on earth can anyone justify, against the background of the requirements of this
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place--this point is tied up with the social chapter and with all the other matters that we have discussed, such as raising taxation--the provision going through by prerogative? It will be the basis for all the corruption and fraud that we see in prospect.Sir Teddy Taylor : My hon. Friend is putting a genuine point and is saying that there is something else in the treaty, as hon. Members may know. There is probably no one among the newer, younger and more active hon. Members who has played a greater part than my hon. Friend in drawing people's attention to the dangers of all the spending, fraud and corruption. I appeal to my hon. Friend not to ask how we can debate article F.3. We shall not be allowed to debate article F.3. How can we control the spending, fraud and corruption? I believe that we need the support of the Government and that we need a vote by Parliament to say that the British point of view is that we should have a Europe without any resources.
Rev. Ian Paisley (Antrim, North) : The hon. Gentleman referred to the report from Brussels of a 20 per cent. rise in electricity charges. Is he aware that that will be used as a sop in the Denmark referendum? Because the politicians in Denmark feel that they may lose the referendum, they believe that, to get the green lobby, they must have a rise in the price of electricity.
Sir Teddy Taylor : My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Terrible things are happening in the attempt to get votes and support. We know what happened with the Republic of Ireland, for example. I feel sorry for some of the ports of Northern Ireland which now find themselves facing wholly unfair competition bethough they are getting worse, let us try to find some answer to the problem.
My answer is that the British Government should say, "We want the future to be a Europe without funds. We think that the problems would be solved if funds were removed. If we do not do that, things will simply get worse." Where does the money come from? At present there are four components.
Mr. Stephen Day (Cheadle) : Is not my hon. Friend saying in reality that a Europe without funds is no Europe at all? Is not he really telling the House that that is what he desires? Is not that the nub of the issue? My hon. Friend undoubtedly speaks eloquently about protecting the sovereignty of this place. He also mentioned the Irish Republic. Is not he really saying that he believes that Britain's position in the new Europe that he envisages--that is, no Europe at all--relative to Brussels, if it carries on without us, will be the same as Dublin's position relative to London before the Irish Republic gained some sovereignty by joining the EC?
Sir Teddy Taylor : Goodness gracious, I am saying exactly the opposite. If we have an EC without funding, of course there can still be free trade, co-operation and friendship. How can my hon. Friend say to his constituents--I am sure that he has many poor constituents who face hardship, whom he looks after very well--"I am terribly sorry. We are spending a fortune on fraud, on tobacco and on agriculture. We have a bank that is wasting money like water and there is nothing that I can
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do about it." My hon. Friend may believe in a good future for the EC. I believe that it will end up in tears the way it is going. It will end up with people marching in the streets. It will end up with mass unemployment. If there was no funding, the EC could carry on doing all the positive things that some people think it can do, such as promoting free trade and friendship, but it would not waste money with policies that inevitably lead to graft and corruption, as we well see.I see that the conscientious hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Hayes) has just walked into the Chamber. I am sure that he must be aware of many poor constituents who face hardship. He must be very angry when he hears about the money being wasted in fraud and corruption in the EC. His people want to know what he intends to do about it. The answer is that there is nothing that we can do about it because of the EC's crazy policies. The only thing to do is to take away the money and put it under the democratic control of member states.
Mr. Jerry Hayes (Harlow) : What I shall do about it is to vote for the Maastricht treaty so that the courts can intervene to stop these things happening, which they cannot do under the treaty of Rome.
Sir Teddy Taylor : My hon. Friend is one of the younger and more enthusiastic hon. Members. I appeal to him to look back at the assurances given in the past. Baroness Thatcher, who used to be the Conservative Prime Minister--a splendid lady--also thought that she had the answer. She said, "Vote for the Single European Act. It is great. We shall get legally binding controls on spending. We shall not be able to spend a penny more on the agriculture policy. Things will automatically happen." She found out what happened. I am afraid that she was misled in the same way as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow has been. What happened was that, whenever the controls were breached, the EC Commission, followed by the Council of Finance Ministers, simply said that it would have a metric year of 10 months, with 12 months' income and 10 months' spending. That is how it kept within the legally binding restrictions.
I point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow that we have been told this time and time again. Decent, honourable, sincere Members like himself have been misled. If we carry on his way with Maastricht, we shall end up in a horrible mess of even more overspending, more fraud and more corruption. His constituents, for whom he works so hard, will suffer just as much as anyone else.
Mr. Barry Porter (Wirral, South) : I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument with some care. There is a point that I do not understand. There appear to be rules and regulations through the Single European Act and so on about fraud and corruption. Nobody takes any notice of them and nothing happens. Why should whatever is contained in the Maastricht treaty be treated in any other way? If things are not in the national interest of Germany, Greece, and Italy--whether we are talking about olive oil, tobacco or a central bank--why should they take any notice of this treaty any more than they take any notice of the Single European Act?
Sir Teddy Taylor : Those countries will notice if we take the money away because the practices will stop. One of the
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interesting points of this debate--I hope that my hon. Friend has noticed--is that the newspapers that used to be terribly supportive of the EC have now become doubtful. Instead of my hon. Friend listening to me, which might involve some heartache for him, he should go to the Library and read, of all papers, today's Daily Mail. It used to be one of the most terrible papers which always presented one side of the Euro debate. It has a wonderful article today in which it gives a detailed explanation of how the most appalling frauds are going on in Greece. It points out how fraud is basically uncontrollable in Greece.6 pm
How do the frauds work? In the case of olive oil, the Daily Mail states :
"In order to show that non-existent olive crops are real, businessmen have set up an ingenious network of fake companies that supposedly buy the produce. Of 152 companies registered as producing olive oil, only 44 actually do so. The EC pays 160 drachmas, about 50p--for every kilo of olives which ends up as bottled or canned oil. Of the 300,000 tons of olives produced annually, only about 50,000 tons go into the country's shops as oil. But subsidies were claimed last year on about 140,000 tons-- amounting to £46 million in illegal handouts."
If the Daily Mail, as a great supporter of the EC, is getting worried, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Porter) must be worried, because nothing is being done about it. It is terrible that open, basic, criminal fraud should be occurring in Greece. Money is pouring in and it is appalling that great damage and distress have been caused. My hon. Friend, who I know has taken a great interest in Euro matters, should ask what he can do about that dreadful problem. The answer is nothing at all unless he agrees that we should take away the money and let every member state look after its own resources under democratic control.
My hope is that the Committee will approve the amendment.
Mr. Barry Porter : I have taken little part in the debate over the past however many days, but I think that the Committee is in danger of reaching its boredom threshold, as has happened in the rest of the country.
Does not my hon. Friend make my point for me? Regardless of what is contained in the treaty of Rome and the Single European Act, countries behave in their own national interests and nobody does anything about it. What is so different about Maastricht? We will carry on acting in our national interest, not in connection with olive oil or tobacco, but perhaps in connection with a central bank or a common currency. None of this will happen and it is not worth all the excitement or the time spent debating it.
Sir Teddy Taylor : But the frauds are happening today. They are known as monkey crops. Of course, if there were no EC funds the Greek Government could, if they wanted to, pay for a lot of fraudulent activities for the payment of the production of goods that do not exist. If there were not EC funding, that kind of crazy activity could not take place unless the Government of Greece paid for it.
Mr. Michael Spicer : My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Porter) appears to be arguing, "Such corruptions go on in other countries. So what? The Maastricht treaty will not make any difference". Is not the whole point about the own resources issue--the one directly addressed by my hon. Friend in his amendment
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--that we are talking not about those countries' own resources, but about our resources? That is what is at stake and what my hon. Friend has drawn to the attention of the House. If it were just the Greeks being corrupt in Greece with their own money, it would not matter. Should not the fund be called the "other people's resources" fund rather than the "own resources" fund?Sir Teddy Taylor : How right my hon. Friend is. Although I am sure that we will always have some graft and corruption, we want to stop such corruption being done with Euro funds. The existence of own resources means that, even though we have splendid Agriculture Ministers who work hard and try to do their best for the Community, there is nothing that they can do. I believe that the only way in which we can move forward is to take away those funds.
Rev. Ian Paisley : Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, unfortunately, such things are happening even though the Government, and successive Governments, have done their best to police all those arrangements? While we keep to the letter of the EC law, other Governments do not. Therefore, our country has to bow down and take all the stick.
Sir Teddy Taylor : I appreciate how my hon. Friend must feel, because Britain is a law-abiding country, whereas the other countries are basically ignoring the law and grabbing money through fraudulent, filthy graft, greed and corruption. What are we going to do about it? I appeal to the Committee not merely to acknowledge that the problems exist but to consider what we can do about them.
Mr. Day : In dealing with that point, my hon. Friend should recognise that the Maastricht treaty essentially increases the powers of the European Court to deal with such problems as non-compliance to which some of my hon. Friends seem to object so strongly. The mechanism for dealing with the corruption is in the treaty. We should support the treaty and get rid of the abuse.
Sir Teddy Taylor : If my hon. Friend believes that--and I am sure that he will reflect on his view--he should look back at our previous debates. We have repeatedly been told, "New measures are being taken, new bodies set up, new fraud commissions created." We have been told that all kinds of things are happening, but such measures have never worked and can never work. Perhaps my hon. Friend is contemplating voting for the proposals and has been misled into thinking that giving a new power to the European Parliament--or saying that we are giving an institution such as the Court of Auditors new significance and increased importance--will help. If so, he should bear in mind the fact that, for years, the Court of Auditors has been publishing information on the basis of regular research which shows how money is pouring down a big drain, but that, sadly, nothing happens ; things simply get worse and worse.
With the Maastricht treaty, we are simply obtaining yet more assurances that something will be done while at the same time giving out more money-- more own resources. The problem will get worse. If my hon. Friend has been misled, as we have been misled in the past, he should say, "Let us look at the crazy policies that create all the spending and do something about them."
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What started as a moderate and limited amount of spending by Brussels has increased and is now set to increase further. One or two hon. Members see some hope in Maastricht. To my mind, cause for optimism is to be found only in future estimates of total EC spending and of our own contribution. The trouble is that they are invariably wrong. I suppose that they help to restore fading morale, at least. The Foreign Office is particularly helpful in this regard. On 11 June, at column 438 of Hansard, the Chancellor of the Exchequer explained that our net contribution for 1992 was forecast to be £2.6 billion, which is about £4 per week per British family. However, in its colourful and wildly misleading pamphlet, produced at great expense and entitled "Britain in Europe", the Foreign Office explained that the figure was actually £1.7 billion. When I asked about the difference, I was told that different ways of doing sums had been used in each case, which is true. Similarly, in Edinburgh, where the new own resources regime was discussed, we were assured that there were firm controls on spending. Hon. Members will see that commitments agreed at Edinburgh were greatly in excess of the agreed own resources ceiling.The question that I put to the House is simply whether it makes sense to have any own resources at all. Does it make Europe any stronger, any bigger, any fitter or any more just? Does it help jobs or prosperity? Frankly, I think that it would be infinitely better for those who believe in Europe if we scrapped own resources altogether.
The first problem that inevitably emerges when substantial own resources are made available to a non-democratic structure based on nonsensical policies is that a great deal of cash goes in waste, extravagance and fraud. I could provide many examples, but I shall restrict myself to three.
Mr. Sweeney : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way in mid- flow. Is he arguing--in a nutshell--that, if we prevent money from being dished out throughout the Community, we automatically prevent graft and corruption by drying off the font from which the funds that finance that corruption emanate? Playing devil's advocate, let me ask my hon. Friend this. One of the arguments advanced in favour of this treaty of European union is that the European Court will henceforth have power to impose sanctions in the form of substantial--indeed, unlimited--fines on member states that transgress the provisions of European law. What would my hon. Friend say to those who might argue that opportunities for graft and corruption will effectively be eliminated, or at least dramatically reduced, if the treaty is ratified?
Sir Teddy Taylor : Why should we bother even investigating the possibility of whether the Maastricht treaty will make it more effective to control those policies? If we scrap the policies, we will guarantee success. For example, if we did not have the common agricultural policy, which is based on opportunities for fraud and corruption, the problems would not exist.
Obviously, there may be graft and corruption in every member state. However, if there are democratic controls and if people know that it is their money that is being spent, there will be some kind of control. If we do away with the policies which are not subject to democratic
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control and which countries regard as a means of pinching from other countries, we will do away with a great deal of the graft and corruption.We know that there is an enormous amount of graft and corruption in Greece. Why should the Greek Government bother much about what is happening unless they have a special wish to pursue sensible policies based on objectivity? Why should the Greek Government bother as they are basically pinching money from other member states? That is quite a nice position.
We know that some dreadful things are happening in the Republic of Ireland. If money is pouring into the Republic of Ireland for graft and corruption, why should the Government there be bothered? What about the terrible amounts of money paid to the Mafia in Italy for delivering non-existent fruit juice to a firm in Palermo? Why should the Italians bother about that when the money is simply being taken from Brussels? If there were democratic controls and the money involved belonged to the country concerned, the problems would fade away.
I want to consider three specific examples of how waste and corruption arise inevitably from the existence of own resources. First, there were the astonishing revelations which originally appeared in that splendid paper the Financial Times about the wild and extravagant spending of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is headed by a rather unusual Frenchman who has no banking experience and whose sole claim to fame is that he impressed President Mitterrand when they met in a nightclub.
We have all read about the monstrous expenditure of the bank on its temporary accommodation, on its replacement marble, on its very extravagant parties and on those ridiculous private jets which were three times as dear as the British private jets that could have been borrowed. No tax was paid on all that. We should not ask ourselves why the issue has, according to the press, apparently infuriated MEPs. Instead, we should ask ourselves how all that could happen when the bank was operating under the control of a Euro-board that includes our own excellent Chancellor of the Exchequer.
We know that our Chancellor of the Exchequer is a tough man who watches spending very carefully indeed. We know that he is worried about every penny of expenditure in this country. However, that Frenchman is operating on the board on which sits not only our Chancellor of the Exchequer, but Finance Ministers from other countries and yet it goes on and nothing is done about it. The plain fact is not that our Chancellor of the Exchequer is at fault, but that such wild spending is uncontrollable under the EC system. Instead of trying to say who is to blame or that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made an appalling mess of the issue, it would be better if we recognised that the system was wrong and that something should be done about it.
My second example relates to the astonishing and worrying tale of that pathetic EC official who fell to his death from a window in the Commission's office.
Mr. Spearing : Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the EBRD, surely the Committee cannot leave the issue of the governorship and the responsibilities of the Chancellor of the Exchequer just like that. The Paymaster General is in
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the Committee this afternoon. Should not we have some explanation from him about the conduct of the governor, who is acting on our behalf and who presumably guarantees the bank with taxpayers' money ?Sir Teddy Taylor : I believe that that would be unfair. As we know, the Paymaster General is one of the most decent and, in my view--I mean this sincerely--honourable members of the Government. I suggest that we should not say who is to blame. There is nothing that we can do about it.
The Paymaster General (Sir John Cope) : I apologise for interrupting my hon. Friend, particularly as he was being polite to me. My interruption has nothing to do with whether I think that he might damage my career if he continues in that fashion. I simply want to draw the attention of the Committee to the fact that the EBRD is not a European Community institution. Although there are questions that hon. Members and Ministers may properly ask, and have properly asked, about the conduct of that institution, it is not an EC institution and it would be wrong to discuss it under this Bill, let alone under this amendment.
Sir Teddy Taylor : Of course, I accept that it is not an EC institution. However, the Minister is aware that it stems from Euro discussions on how to help Russia. I understand that membership of the governing body comprises EC members.
Let us forget all about the bank. Let us pretend that it does not exist and talk simply about the Commission official who jumped from a window in Brussels. As he jumped from Jacques Delors' office window, I think that he must have had something to do with the EC. He was the chap who had been masterminding what The Observer called an astonishing tobacco swindle which filched the equivalent of £1 for every one of the EC's 320 million inhabitants.
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The Observer further alleged that the sad Mr. Antonio Quatraro was believed to be working for the Mafia. Although he was basically suspended from work for over a year, he still enjoyed a tax-free salary of about £100,000 a year. Despite all the alleged reforms in the tobacco regime, the fact is that the monstrous business of growing high-tar tobacco in Europe and then dumping it in the third world and eastern Europe is costing the EC more than £1,000 million a year--about £3 a head per Euro citizen.
That is being done under own resources. This Government and other Governments have been trying to do something about the tobacco regime year after year, but the situation is getting much worse. The only way to improve matters would be to scrap own resources altogether. The EC must operate without any funding. Clearly, nothing can be done about that continuing and growing scandal. I am obviously sorry for a man who jumps from a window and kills himself on a salary of £100,000 a year. I am sorry for his wife and children. There are all kinds of personal tragedies that might stem from that. However, we must consider the most grotesque tragedy of that money being spent on crime and fraud when there are so many other better ways in which we could spend it.
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Mr. Sweeney : Does my hon. Friend accept that it is not simply a matter of corruption and fraud? The very fact that the EC in effect subsidises and encourages the production of tobacco is widely deplored by members of the public, Governments and Health Ministers probably in all member states of the Community. However, year after year, public money-- money belonging to the British public and the public in every member state- -is spent on the artificial encouragement of the tobacco industry.
Sir Teddy Taylor : My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but what can we do about it? Ministers would also agree with my hon. Friend. It is shocking and scandalous, but there is nothing that we can do about it. Our Ministers have tried hard to do something, but if other Ministers had tried, too, something would have happened. However, expenditure simply increases, as does the amount of fraud and corruption in places like Greece. More and more money is being spent.
In fact, the EC has decided to set up an anti-smoking campaign to try to counteract what is happening. That is the kind of nonsensical answer that we get from the EC. It does not try to solve the problem, it simply tries to find a way to spend more money. If my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Sweeney) wants to stop the scandals of the tobacco expenditure, he will succeed only by scrapping own resources. There is no other way to solve the problem. My third example relates to the disgraceful scandal of the CAP. Nothing sickens me more than to hear Ministers announcing the almost quarterly event of new reform plans. We all know that the policy is in a greater mess than ever before. EC expenditure has broken all previous records, even though Ministers continue to say that the expenditure will come down. The mountains of cereals have also broken all previous records.
Fraud and corruption are endemic in the EC's agriculture policy. It was typical to read of the £70 million subsidy under the dairy regime paid for sending two lots of milk powder to the Soviet Union and then to buy back the same milk powder as animal feed. The first shipment was dispatched from Italy to Austria and the exporters received the first subsidy to compensate for the difference between the high price in the EC and the low price in Austria.
The milk was then sold to the Soviet Union, with another subsidy, to help the Soviet Union in its new commitment to democracy. It was then returned immediately to Europe, with the usual fraudulent documents, as animal feed with the help of a further huge subsidy. No one is sure about the next port of call, but I have been told that the milk is still going round. That is a clear example of specific subsidies being paid through the Eurosystem. What on earth can we do about it?
The Minister is well aware--because he is one of the nice ones--that I continue to ask such questions. I continue to say, "Here is a scandal, here is a subsidy and here is something specific with names and addresses, amounts and the rest of it". However, nothing can be done.
Mr. Cryer : The hon. Gentleman knows that I was in the European Community for five years. During that time, such fraud was going on. At one point, the EC Commission pleaded that it did not have the money to fulfil its obligations to 200 Sheffield steel workers who had
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been made redundant and, therefore, could be retrained using money from the Common Market. Those unemployed workers could not get the money from the Common Market because Commissioner Manuel Marin withheld it for 12 months on the alleged basis of a shortage of money. The steel workers were not allowed to collect unemployment pay because they were on an EC course. Therefore, they had to borrow money from the Department of Social Security to eke out a miserable existence for 12 months. That is how the EC applies its priorities. It neglects real areas of genuine poverty for which such money could be used.Sir Teddy Taylor : That is another terrible story and I hope that the Government have listened to it. I could give the hon. Gentleman innumerable cases. I have pleaded with the Government, saying "Here is problem after problem. What can we do about it?" We all have a high regard for British Governments of all parties. Because we have a splendid civil service, the Government have tried to run things in a proper and agreeable way to help our people and to ensure that money is spent properly and fairly. Here we have a vast and ever-increasing amount of money. I am sure that Treasury Ministers, who are good Ministers, must be worried sick about all this money being spent on silly things when there are so many things on which we need to build at home.
Mr. Brian Wilson (Cunninghame, North) : Before the hon. Gentleman moves on from agricultural fraud, I put to him this example. I was on the island of Lewis last week. My octogenarian father-in-law had received an extra-ordinarily convoluted form called the IACS form, which must be one of the most obtuse documents anyone has ever been asked to fill in. My father- in-law, who has two and a half acres, was being asked to fill in the form with all sorts of cartography and to attach appendices. In the accompanying letter, a Minister explained that the form was necessary to counter fraud in the EC.
While I do not support the general thrust of the hon. Gentleman's arguments, perhaps he should suggest to his ministerial friends that it is not necessary for the same form to be filled in by a crofter with two and a half acres in Lewis, a large farmer somewhere in the south of England and an olive oil producer in Corfu because the problem of fraud is scarcely the same in each of those parts of the European Community.
Sir Teddy Taylor : I am sorry about the hon. Gentleman's elderly relative in that lovely part of Scotland. Once again, it is the EC saying that it must try something new to stop the fraud, so it is making all these people fill out those big, complicated forms. Believe it or not, the EC is holding conferences and classes to guide farmers on how to fill out the forms. It is yet another pathetic attempt to say, "We have to do something". As long as we have the sort of problems that exist in Italy, Greece and elsewhere, it is simply a big joke. It will simply mean that many British farmers will fill in lots of complicated forms. It will be good for the paper industry.
Instead of the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson) saying, "What about my poor grandfather and what about the poor crofters in Skye?", he should say, "What will I do about the problem?" To stand up in the Committee and complain does not achieve anything. Hon. Members who are just as conscientious as the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North have complained about
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such matters for years, but the problem only gets worse. The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), who is one of the most conscientious attenders at such debates--he is a good man, but he supports the silly EC--should say "What can I do about it?" If he votes for Maastricht, he knows that the amount of money spent on resources will increase and the amount of fraud will increase. Despite all that the EC can do about it, the spending will get worse. It is very sad.Mr. Knapman : Will my hon. Friend bear in mind the fact that we voted an increase of funds for the common agricultural policy as recently as the week before Easter? We voted an extra £150 million only a fortnight ago.
Sir Teddy Taylor : My hon. Friend is right. I can think of what I would do with £150 million in places such as Southend and Essex. I am sure that all hon. Members feel affronted when they find that people are being told, "I am sorry, we cannot sort out these little parts on the pavement because the local authorities do not have any money. We cannot attend to cleaning school windows as we should do. We cannot do things for poor people. We cannot increase pensions as they should we because we do not have the money". I appeal to all hon. Members. I am sure that pensioners have told hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, "Why should we pay this extra amount of money in VAT on gas and electricity?" We have to say that they must pay it because the Government have run out of money. The Labour party will say that it is because the Government have made a mess. If we did not have to pay our net contribution this year, we could reduce VAT substantially for many people. The increase in VAT is terrible and something must be done. I am trying to be constructive in making my suggestion.
Mr. Michael Spicer : Is not it part of the bizarre conundrum that-- partly in answer to the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson), who wailling out forms. A new industry will be created called the filling out forms industry. The money from consumers goes in and people are paid to fill out the forms. That is what will happen. It is an absurd and bizarre situation.
Sir Teddy Taylor : My hon. Friend is right. I do not want to move away from the amendment, but I shall simply make a brief point. I have done the calculations. I hope that the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North will tell his grandfather that, if we did away with the common agricultural policy, all farmers in Britain with more than 40 hectares could be presented with a cheque for £127,000, fully indexed for inflation on 1 January, at ceremonies in village halls. All farmers with less than 40 hectares, including the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North, could get £40,000. Such payments would be indexed for inflation. Of course, the hon. Gentleman will say, "My grandfather does not get £40,000". However, if he adds up everything, he will find that he gets that amount.
If we scrapped the common agricultural policy, we could tell all farmers in Britain, "If you have more than 40 hectares, here is your £127,000. If you have less than 40 hectares, here is your £40,000. You can do whatever you
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like. You can grow what you like or go where you like." We would have no administration and we would save the Government a fortune.Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) : Dame Janet, I treasure being called a good man by the hon. Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor). That has never happened before. I was a member of the budget committee and the budget sub-committee. When I was a member of the indirectly elected European Parliament, I was in the distinguished company of such perceptive members as Martin Bangemann and Senator Andreotti. We looked at a number of --
Mr. Richard Shepherd : Martin Bangemann is now the Commissioner.
Mr. Dalyell : That is not a generous comment from the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd). Often, there were allegations of fraud. On further investigation, as in Friuli, it turned out that the allegations had been grossly exaggerated and sometimes were non-existent. I am a defender of Brussels on this matter.
Sir Teddy Taylor : I accept the hon. Gentleman's sincerity. If he reads the detailed reports of the Court of Auditors, he will find that they have been through everything. He should examine the spending. I ask him to look in the Library at today's Daily Mail, which gives details of what happens in Greece. Newspapers will not publish specific details without having some objective base, especially a pro-EC paper such as the Daily Mail. The hon. Gentleman must accept that a lot of the fraud exists. It is specific and scandalous. He must know that, if one has a lunatic policy which invites fraud, inevitably it must go on and on.
Mr. Cryer : It is not merely a question of fraud. The fact that the EC is in no way accountable and at one stage removed from directly elected Parliaments such as this one allows it to splash out money without any regard to responsibility. For example, when Spain and Portugal entered the Community, there was not enough room to house all the officials that were required from those two new member states. So the EC sent home 250 well- paid officials on full salary until their age of retirement, when they would receive a reduced pension. The pensions were not very much reduced.
The EC simply spent millions of pounds sending people home to do nothing. It was like an EC mountain of officials doing nothing. That is the pervasive mentality. If people do not know how to handle something they create a huge reservoir or mountain of it and pay everyone to keep it. That mentality pervades the whole EC. It is corrupt not only because it gives backhanders--that occurs, too--but because there is a corruption of thought. It has no clear accountability in spending other people's money.
6.30 pm
Sir Teddy Taylor : I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has raised those important issues. I wish further to emphasise that what we are saying tonight is in no sense anti-EC, anti-Europe, anti-French or anti-German. I am complaining about the destruction of democracy. When democratic control is destroyed, terrible things always happen. That is the great problem.
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Mr. Sweeney : Will my hon. Friend join me in discerning a certain irony? For the fourth time we have a Conservative Government committed in their manifesto to reducing the amount of paperwork for small businesses. They have tried to make small businesses more efficient so that they can survive the recession and thrive in the future. Yet simultaneously we have a steadily increasing burden of bureaucratic intervention at the level of the European Community. Does not my hon. Friend find it strange that our Government should help businesses, for example, by increasing the threshold for VAT so that the number of forms to be filled in is reduced, yet simultaneously take the nation further towards European union? Regardless of his views on the European Community, which he has made clear since before we joined the Community, does my hon. Friend agree that this treaty is a treaty too far?
Sir Teddy Taylor : Yes, my hon. Friend is right. It is a treaty too far. It will simply make things worse. The trouble is that my hon. Friends who support the treaty know it. I find that almost everyone to whom I speak privately--apart from a few fanatics, whom one always finds--accepts that Maastricht will make the European position worse. There will be more fraud, more expenditure and more involvement. People always say, "But what can we do?"
Mr. Michael Spicer : My hon. Friend has just used the word "fanatics". Is he referring rather indelicately to the two Front-Bench teams, or does he have some other people in mind?
Sir Teddy Taylor : I am not referring to the two Front-Bench teams. I find that when I ask people on the Front Benches who support the Maastricht treaty what good it will do, they say, "Don't worry too much, Teddy."
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