Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993 — House of Commons, 2016-03-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) about page 19 and that is the main reason I have entered this debate. It is an unfair exposition on the opportunities and risks linked to our membership of the European Union and I do not think it accurately reflects what the OBR has been saying. I am pleased that the OBR has now spoken for itself and put on the record the important point that it does not believe that in the five-year forecast period, were we to leave, there would be a decline in economic output or activity. Like many forecasters, the OBR believes that the net impact would be quite small. Of course, in line with others it has said that there could be volatility in currency and asset price markets. All I would add is that there has been massive volatility in those markets in the years we have been a member of the EU, so it would be somewhat outrageous to claim that that would suddenly stop were we to leave the EU, but I cannot see that it is a particularly damning point My hon. Friend has gone on at some profound length about what is wrong with page 19. I hope Ministers will look again and realise that it is not a fair exposition of the OBR’s position. Linking the OBR’s position with Christine Lagarde’s comment, which is obviously a comment made for the "stay inside" campaign trail rather than for normal commentary purposes, gives a misleading impression I wish to make some more fundamental points about the figures and the document before us this evening. Let us start with why we are doing this at all. It is a completely pointless exercise, but it is legally required by the treaty and the framework of law under which we live. It is a great pity that in the renegotiation this, along with dozens of other things, was not sorted out because if, as the Minister says, the Government can ignore the advice and the policy laid down by the European Union to control the deficit and get the debt down, what is the point of the Government having to table 300 pages of carefully selected documentation, go through the surveillance procedure, on some occasions receive a report saying that their policy is not good enough or they are not converging in the way that the European Union wishes, and the Government then saying, "Well, fortunately, there is no penalty on us so we will ignore that" It is strange to belong to a club, accept the rules and then, when we do not like the rules, say, "Of course, we didn’t really want any of that and fortunately we have been opted out of the penalty bit of it." It is a strange exercise. I suspect that the official machine of the Government, which goes on whoever is in office, is quite guided by all this. There is probably a wish on the part of officials to get the British Government policy and the figures closer to the convergence requirements. It is high time the European Union itself had an honest debate about the most pressing and most difficult target it has set—the target that all member states should keep their stock of debt to 60% of their national income Practically every member state is way above that, and some of them violate the target by having more than double the level set down by the European Union. Why does that body think it is sensible to persevere with a target that none of the member states wish to keep and none of them are trying to reach?