| Independent Fraud Office
|
|
Mr. Cash: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not want to overstate his case. Let us consider what has happened in the case of the competition directorate. Considerable independent powers have been given to officials, leaving British officials pretty much as nodding donkeys in investigations. It has been brought to my attention that continental subsidiaries of at least one company were invaded by armed officials led by the European Commission. What procedures are set up when such powers are handed over to the European Commission if it is engaged in such conduct? We must face up to such problems, which raise serious procedural, judicial and legal questions about matters associated with burdens of proof. We should move in that direction with considerable restraint. Indeed, we should not proceed in that direction. Mr. Rammell: With the greatest respect to the hon. Member for Stone, I am now utterly confused, because I understood him to be arguing at the beginning of the debate for more explicit powers for the European Commission Mr. Cash: rose The Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman is not giving way again. Mr. Rammell: No, I shall not give way. I understood the hon. Gentleman to be arguing at the beginning of the debate for extra, explicit powers for the European Commission, a position from which he now appears to be backtracking. I should like to turn to the problems experienced in the European Commission and to the debate about the sensible and practical way to deal with them. It is arguable that a cultural problem of a lack of concern exists within the European Commission, although Mr. Wiggins said earlier this year that a change of attitude had taken place. Nevertheless, some of the specific allegations that have been made by members of all parties about the conduct of individual commissioners give enormous cause for concern. Like the European Parliament, we should focus on how practically to tackle such issues. At the time that the European Parliament was dealing with those issues, we were dealing with allegations and speculation, without hard evidence. [Interruption.] I am sure that the commotion outside cannot be a response to what I am saying. Some Conservative Members argued that the entire Commission should be removed. That would have been wholly disproportionate. In the most recent major dispute of a similar constitutional nature in this Parliament the Scott inquiry Labour Members never argued that the entire Government should have been sacked. We specified individual Ministers, as should have been the case on this occasion. Conservative and Liberal Democrat representatives were offered the opportunity of joining a cross-party approach involving the British parties in the European Parliament, and they refused it. The European parliamentary Labour party went further, and proposed a resolution, on the basis of which the European Parliament has proceeded, which called on President Santer to accept his responsibility and to resign if individual commissioners were deemed culpable of financial or administrative mismanagement once the independent group of experts had reported. That was absolutely right. Reading some of the newspapers this morning, it seems as though, under close and detailed questioning from Labour Members of the European Parliament, a case is being made relating to Commissioner Cresson. The logic of our position may in time lead to a challenging and questioning of her position, which Labour Members of the European Parliament tried to achieve. I have listened carefully to the statements made about Mr. Van Buitenen, whose contribution I greatly respect. However, support for whistleblowers from the Conservative party is rather tardy, remembering its attitude towards, for example, Sarah Tisdall and Clive Ponting, who were whistleblowing on far more serious and substantive issues than those that we are discussing. The response was not to give them a job or to call them in as outside consultants, but to lock them up. We need to face up to the issues, which include the failure to set objectives and the need to monitor what the EU programmes have achieved. We should consider whether too much of the expenditure is bunched and handed out towards the end of the financial year, which creates a momentum towards confusion and misappropriation. We need to tackle over-budgeting, poor objective setting and the problem of over-complex legislation. I am sure that all Committee members have talked to constituents who are involved in the programme, who have said that the system is so byzantine and complicated that one is almost compelled to break the rules. The Government are responding to the issues that need to be tackled. They have presented responses through the SEM 2000 programme and they have suggested giving independent additional powers to the head of the fraud investigation unit. We need to move in that direction and to tackle those issues. We should not use the suggestion of fraud or misappropriation in the EU or the fact that errors are made as a political football, which Opposition Euro-sceptics use to score points rather than to tackle the real issues.
12.1 pmMr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood): It is difficult to feel indignation at the Minister although there is a place for righteous indignation in politics and this is probably one of the annual events at which one is justified in feeling it because she is sweet reasonableness itself. The issues that confront us are grave and our constituents are enormously concerned about them. We know that whatever decisions the Committee reaches will have no direct effect, but we hope that somehow, like a drop wearing away a stone, the enormity of the corruption, misappropriation and waste that is inherent or endemic in the EU will in time be appreciated. I had the pleasure if that is the right word of attending the last four debates on the European Union budget and the Court of Auditors report. I assure the Minister that my strictures, for what they were worth, were just as severe when my own party was in government as they are today. Neither party, when in government, has hitherto been willing or had the power to do anything about the problem, which is so rebarbative to our constituents. Our constituents lead hard lives they work long hours, and many of them probably have almost no savings. They see a culture of waste and self-indulgence in the EU, which is remote from their daily existence. The institution that we subsidise brings them no benefits of which they are aware and they cannot see any benefits for the continent in which they live. The structures of that institution help to perpetuate the division of Europe, which we hoped had ended when the Berlin wall came down and with the termination of the cold war. However, the EU is a rich man's club, involving the whole rigmarole of stretch limousines, Euro-meals, photo opportunities and conferences in exotic places. The institution provides an agreeable lifestyle to apparatchiks who enjoy manipulating power and it has a dynamism and a momentum of its own. We are told that the acquis communautaire cannot be redressed or rolled back and that the process of integration must march on. We are going to fund this country's preparations to give up its independence and freedom and to acquire the European single currency. Let us consider the EU institutions one by one, starting with the common agricultural policy. More is spent on that than on anything else. As well as representing a London constituency, I have a house in the north of England. I see the toils and travails of hill farmers in the Pennines who get up at four in the morning but are hardly able to make ends meet. At the same time, we subsidise set aside so that big farmers cereal producers get rich, at our constituents' expense, on the proceeds of growing nothing. The subventions to the Mediterranean countries the olive groves that have to be counted and measured by satellite, the wine lakes and the tobacco producers are not relevant to British farmers or British living standards. Indeed, the expenditure militates against good living standards because we keep out the primary produce of more economic countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and those in latin America. The system is grotesque. It has kept out the largely agricultural economies of central and eastern Europe because, as the negotiations on Agenda 2000 have made clear, it would cost too much to extend the same agricultural support to those countries. We need to have a community and not a union; one that is based on free trade and co-operation, without a common agricultural policy. As the hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) so wisely implied, we should have a system of national agricultural support that we could control and monitor more easily, which would be less susceptible to fraud and which would be tailored to the needs of our farmers and producers. The same is true of the common fisheries policy. Most countries in the world husband their maritime resources up to 200 miles, which is the limit in international law, or to the median line with neighbouring states. They do that for good ecological and economic reasons. Regarding our waters as a common resource has led to the depredation of stocks to the point of virtual extinction and to the death of coastal communities. Yet we pay for that; we subsidise the decommissioning of boats and fishing activities in other parts of the EU, to the detriment of our fishermen. Overseas aid was mentioned. It is a significant part of the budget. The Secretary of State for International Development, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), who is a doughty champion of the interests of the poor around the world we admire her for that recognises, as we do, that British taxpayer' money, disbursed to the poor and needy overseas, should be properly accounted for and well used. But half our aid programme is channelled through the European Union. There is no effective control and much is wastefully applied. She would be highly critical of the process. What has a European aid programme to do with creating a community of peace-loving democratic countries in western Europe? Very little; indeed, it maximises the opportunity for fraud and waste. We are trying to minimise the disparity of wealth, partly through the integration process the convergence that we hear so much about, between EU member states and, ultimately, between them and applicant nations. Structural funds and cohesion funds are disbursed for that process. The trouble with structural funds is that they lead to a mendicant mentality. A Labour Member surmised that his constituents may receive European funds. I attended a big event, sponsored by the great and good in this capital city of London, at which the embryo London development agency speculated how much European money the capital could obtain. We do not need British taxpayers' money to go to other parts of the European Union to enable other countries to compete more effectively against our industries and our workers, which costs British jobs. That is not a good use of British taxpayer's money. Actually, it is a scandal cohesion funds likewise. So many parts of our country suffer from poor communications, bad roads, and so on, yet we are subsidising vast highways in the Iberian peninsular. Is that a responsible use of British taxpayers' money, when we are stuck in jams for hours on end? If we have a Community rather than a union, we do not need big bureaucratic institutions to run it. All other free trade organisations have eschewed the European model and kept away from it like the plague the Association of South-East Asian Nations, Mercosur and the North American Free Trade Association because they know about the temptations to an accretion of wastefulness, bureaucracy and misappropriation. We have a Commission and a Parliament, and much else besides. If one goes to Brussels one sees monuments to a totalitarian culture they look Nazi or Stalinist. They are huge, impersonal edifices, but they cost money, and those who work in them have to be paid. All too often, we find a dereliction of duty among those who are supposed to scrutinise those institutions. Why? Because the Parliament depends for its funding on the European Union the very body that it is supposed to call to account. Small wonder that it is a paper tiger. You have been indulgent, Mr. Stevenson. I have rehearsed old arguments in a simplistic way, but they are serious arguments because, as I said our constituents have a tough existence, Not one penny of their money should be misapplied or wasted. it should be properly accounted for, but it is not, Year on year, nothing happens. This Parliament is in dereliction of its duty to constituents because it is impotent, and our Government should take action but cutting off funding to areas in which it is unjustified. I would start with tobacco, but there is a very long list, to which other hon. Members may wish to add.
12.12 pm
|
| |
| ©Parliamentary copyright 1999 | Prepared 24 February 1999 |
