At the centre of Mr De Rossa’s report is a stand-off between the Commission and the Council over the exportability of five benefits, three from the United Kingdom. Mr De Rossa suggests that the report should be adopted without delay, so that Regulation 1408/71 can be tidied up. Then he proposes that the European Court of Justice resolve the dispute over the five benefits. We believe that the decision on the United Kingdom benefit should be left to Her Majesty’s Government, which does not want them to be exportable. Indeed, the Council’s previously stated common position upholds that of Her Majesty’s Government. We therefore deplore the Commission’s change of mind. We believe that it should be for each Member State to define the basis on which its benefits are to be paid and to whom. We absolutely oppose the notion that the deadlock should be resolved by the European Court of Justice. Benefits are part of taxation systems. They are dual systems: taking from and giving back. To interfere in either is to interfere in the taxation system as a whole. Since the EU likes to keep up the pretence that it has no competence for issues of taxation, it should not therefore interfere at all in the benefits system.

To return, finally, to Mr De Rossa’s article, it is noted that Finland and Sweden also contest the listing of two allowances. We respect their stance. The article shows that the Commission has exempted the Irish carers’ allowance, as the Irish Government wished. It is wrong and iniquitous that the United Kingdom carers’ allowance has not been exempted. As regards the three United Kingdom benefits, let me say unequivocally that Her Majesty’s elected government should be treated like its Irish counterparts in that respect and that should be the end of the matter.

The Commission seems to be heading the other way, towards a freer structure. Recently it proposed that 80% of resources be managed in a decentralised way. If competencies were indeed to be restored to the nation state, the UK Independence Party might be persuaded to support the Commission.

This is because the UK was drawn into what was then the EC on the promise that it was not leading to a federal state, but that it was simply about trade. If only that were so. One thing is certain: the UK has half the average unemployment rate of the EU as a whole. Along with Sweden and Denmark we have the lowest levels of unemployment. Governments do not produce that. They simply make the conditions right for employment to flourish.

The single most important factor is the common currency. Sweden, Denmark and the UK have not adopted the single currency, so they are not saddled with a single interest rate. Even in the UK there is a disparity of economies. The Bank of England cannot set an interest rate suitable for the whole country. How then can the European Central Bank set a common interest rate suitable for a Europe with widely varying economies arising from such great geographical diversity and widely differing ways of life?

Along with my colleagues, I shall vote against this report.

If we go back to first principles, the United Kingdom is the fourth largest economy in the world, the third largest trading nation in the world and the head of a Commonwealth with 30% of the world’s population in it. London is the world’s leading financial centre and English is the common business language of the world. Why then, in view of all these things, have we been represented since 1973 by the EEC, the EC, the EU and no doubt, if the Constitution is adopted, the United States of Europe? Surely it would be better for the United Kingdom to sit at the WTO in its own right. Not only do we have a better relationship with our former colonies than most other European countries, but we are not dominated by the same protectionist imperative as the European Union. That is why Oxfam has awarded the European Union its Double Standards Award for rank hypocrisy.

We want a British voice. We want real British influence and perhaps then we can give the Third World a real sporting chance.

(Applause)

To date, we have contributed some GBP 180 billion. We have received back around GBP 105 billion by way of subsidies of one form or another. Well, we believe that very soon there is to be a general election in the United Kingdom, and I think the voters are going to want to know what has happened to that GBP 75 billion deficit in our contributions. Is there going to be an answer from our current Prime Minister or Chancellor of the Exchequer? Is there going to be an answer from this House? When we remind them that the European Court of Auditors has, for the tenth year running, refused to sign the books because billions of pounds have gone missing, they might well put two and two together as regards what has happened to our 75 billion.

Have we got a Stability and Growth Pact or not? The Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Mr Jean-Claude Juncker, recently said to reporters in Brussels: ‘I am beginning to seriously consider the option of not changing the Pact at all’. He added: ‘We are not excluding the scenario of leaving the Pact as it is; that is now a distinct possibility. I have no goal of replacing a Pact that does not work well with one that seems to function but goes wrong later’. Previously he had said that the Pact was dead.

So what about this Stability and Growth Pact? Is it not ludicrous that countries that run up a deficit of over 3% are then fined enormous sums of money, making their position worse? Of course the Stability Pact is wrong. It is useless! Dump it!

This episode is a perfect illustration of the cavalier way in which this Parliament too often goes about its business, and that is no laughing matter given the profound effect the EU has on people’s daily lives.

Natura 2000 is a case in point. Although we all appreciate that the environment is very important, the livelihood of human beings has to be the priority. Natura 2000 has had a negative effect in this regard. Let me give a good example from the Czech Republic, where an area has been designated to create feeding habitats favourable to partridges and quails and to reduce the erosion of soil and nutrients. My Czech colleagues tell me that this has been very good for the quails, but disastrous for the human beings who live and work there! In the United Kingdom too, chalk downland, dry bog and hedgerows have been destroyed in the name of EU standardisation.

The Habitats Directive, from which Natura 2000 derives, seeks to establish a common framework for nature protection as though wildlife were subject to academic theory. Nature, by definition, cannot be standardised, nor can real human lives, which is why UKIP opposes the dead hand of the EU wherever its grip extends.

We are asked to consider a mid-term review, but there seems little to review. The unemployment rate is high and rising and 101 000 regulations and directives are bleeding the life out of the wealth creators. Growth is worse. Mrs Figueiredo said in her report yesterday that 22 million jobs need to be created in the EU in the next five years. You do not have to be Hayek to know that cannot be done. It is interesting to see the panic setting in amongst the federalists at last; the cracks are really showing. Mr Barroso is a rampant free marketeer, according to the people over there, while his ideas went out with the Ark according to Mr Mandelson, from the right.

In Britain, at least, people are waking up. I quote from this morning’s Times: ‘Peers tell Brussels to give back cash from EU budget’. We have paid in GBP 180 billion and got back GBP 105 billion. Where has the GBP 75 billion gone?

Mr Barroso, you try and keep bleeding the British taxpayer at this rate, because worse is better and on that basis this corrupt institution is doing very well indeed.

(Applause from the IND/DEM Group)