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Mr. Davidson: What is the figure?
Mr. Spring:
I cannot give one, because we do not know exactly what the final budget will be. We have clearly set
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out the direction that we wish to follow. I cannot give a precise figure, and it would be absurd to try to do so when the budget has not been finalised, but the hon. Gentleman can rest assured that we will commit ourselves to fighting Britain's corner, as did a former Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to return the rebate to this country. We will do that with all the energy that has ensured that although we have remained a very big contributor, our contribution would otherwise have been much greater. We will do the same on CAP reform.
Mr. Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op): Although the hon. Gentleman, like everyone else, does not know the total of the budget that will be agreed, can he tell the House what percentage of the EU budget his Government, if they were indeed elected, would want to have as CAP spending?
Mr. Spring: If the hon. Gentleman would like to answer this question, we might find common ground: what is his Government's objective on that percentage?
Mr. Hendrick: I am happy to answer that it would be the minimum. During the time of this Government, it has fallen from about 60 per cent. of the EU budget to about 40 per cent. What would the hon. Gentleman's target be?
Mr. Spring: The hon. Gentleman and I do have something in common, as it would be the minimum.
On structural funds, I again welcome the Government's approach. I agree with their policy of taking back control of structural funds. More national control over those funds would enable us to target them where they are most needed and to reduce the bureaucracy that surrounds their use. Philip Bradbourne MEP, Conservative spokesman on regional policy in the European Parliament, summed up our view as follows:
With ten years of dodgy accounts, including €5.3 billion going unused into Commission coffers from the Regional Aid Budget in one year, devolving grant aid back to Member States seems the only viable solution to an ongoing problem.
However, I believe that the differences will begin to show on Lisbon and international aid. The Lisbon agenda's economic objectives can only be supported, but economic reform is proceeding slowly on some matters and is frankly non-existent on others. I appreciate that the Government acknowledge that. The Prime Minister has taken the trouble to recognise it every year since setting out the Lisbon process. In the 2003 Treasury assessment of progress on Lisbon, his foreword admitted that
In the 2004 assessment, he claimed:
"We have made significant, but not sufficient, progress . . . we need to go further to meet the standards being set by our competitors elsewhere in the world."
The 2005 report was published last month. The Prime Minister commented that
The Government produce many fine words on Lisbon, and have done so since the agenda was first agreed five years ago, but little or nothing gets done. I welcome the fact that José Manuel Barroso, the new European Commission President, has presented a programme to re-energise the Lisbon process. It is vital that national Governments get a grip and push ahead with economic reform, on which the EU's future prosperity relies. Ministers pay lip service to Lisbon while eroding the UK's competitive position at home through ever increasing burdens of taxation and red tape.
I want to consider aid. It is essential to make more effective use of the money that is currently spent multilaterally. There is a strong case for increasing national control over the aid funds currently spent by the European Union. In 1990, 70 per cent. of EU development aid went to the world's poorest countries, but that has now fallen to 52 per cent. Half the EU aid budget is spent on middle or high-income developing countries. That cannot be the best use of our overseas aid, which should help the poorest people in the world. To its credit, British aid does that; European aid, in many respects, does not.
The former Secretary of State for International Development, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) agrees. She said that
"anyone who knows anything about development knows that the EU is the worst agency in the world, the most inefficient, the least poverty-focused, the slowest, flinging money around political gestures rather than promoting real development."
I believe that the EU should commit itself clearly to devoting the great bulk of its budget to the poorest countries and the most impoverished citizens. We should not tamely accept the status quo. Britain should set an example and press other member states to follow it. I call on the Government to publish a detailed annual assessment of all EU aid expenditure, describing Britain's involvement, the procedure for monitoring each project and an assessment of the results.
Chris Bryant: I thank the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene before he perorates—if there is such a verb. He makes the point that others have made in similar debates, that most international aid budgets should go to the poorest countries. However, does he accept that, in some instances, such as support for the Palestinian Authority or in the Balkans, some of the policies that we in this country tried to pursue ended up with commitments that the EU met on our behalf?
Mr. Spring:
I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, but there are many mechanisms whereby the EU can deal with political and economic development in, for example, the Palestinian Authority, including Euro-Med agreements, which are helpful. I also believe that, in such a process, some assistance can be given. However, I think that he would agree that poverty and all that flows from it is the challenge of international aid giving in the 21st century, and that we should focus on
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that more than anything else. The problem is that the EU has not been efficient in doing that either managerially and functionally or in terms of the principles that underlie the aid programme. We handle these matters better in this country, and if that could be replicated in the European Union, it would not be the target of so much criticism.
Mr. Bercow: My hon. Friend makes a superb case, but he is characteristically inclined somewhat to understate it. Will he take it from me that an illustration of the problem in relation to the European Union aid budget came when I tabled a number of questions—admittedly about 300—to the current Secretary of State for International Development, asking him for his assessment of the efficacy and value for money of the European Union aid projects to which Britain was contributing? The Secretary of State could manage only to provide an answer that referred me to a website. Does not that demonstrate the paucity of accountability, and suggest that if any savings that we make in the agriculture budget by getting rid of trade-distorting subsidies are to be spent on aid projects, they should be spent on bilateral aid projects rather than on multilateral ones?
Mr. Spring: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. A few minutes ago, I made the similar point that we needed greater transparency with regard to what exactly was happening to Britain's contribution to the EU aid budget. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, whose knowledge and understanding of this matter greatly enhances the proceedings in the House. I agree that the focus that he describes commends itself to the House as we consider this important matter.
Mr. Davidson: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that aid spending ought to be about assisting the poorest, and that those who seek to divert money earmarked for aid into financing the development of an EU foreign and defence policy—however worthy that might be—are in fact distorting priorities? There is no way in which aid money should be going to any other than the poorest people.
Mr. Spring: I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. We all agree about giving aid to the poorest, and the governance of the countries involved is crucial in that regard. There is no point in giving substantial sums of taxpayers' money to the poorest if it is being skimmed off and not reaching them. The institutional underpinnings for economic development and human rights in some of those countries certainly need to be improved, and there must be a linkage between that and aid. On the hon. Gentleman's point about wasting money on some futile exercise in creating a foreign and defence policy under which we would lose our national control of such matters, I agree implicitly with what I believe he was saying: it would be absurd. I can assure him that when we are in government in a few weeks' time, that will certainly not happen.
I should like to conclude by saying a few words about the Commission's proposals for a new own resources decision and its plans to scrap the UK rebate. Hon. Members will know that member states' financial contributions to the EU are based on the provisions of
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the own resources decision. The UK's contribution is adjusted by the rebate secured by Lady Thatcher, she of blessed memory, at Fontainebleau in 1984—
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