The current growth projection in 2006 for the eurozone is estimated by the IMF at 1.8%, with the largest economies being the worst performers. This weak growth is far from sufficient to sustain the EU's social programme. The Commission suggests that a cut in income tax of 1% of GDP would produce a greater than proportionate rise in growth. A harmonised VAT scheme, therefore, should be used to shift from direct to indirect taxation. Unfortunately, there is no undisputed evidence that this growth would occur. Moreover, this shift implies a redistribution from the poor to the rich, like the common agricultural policy, which rewards landowners rather than farmers. Is this really what we want?

I should like to suggest that instead of trying to harmonise taxation, our partners in the Commission should rather leave it alone. Do they not realise that their obsessive pursuit of the illusive level playing field and their inward-looking regulation-led policies are damaging growth rather than stimulating it? The working time directive, the temporary workers directive, the common agricultural policy: are all examples of a European Union that refuses to wake up to the reality of global markets, free trade and efficiency, but is instead intent on pursuing an outdated social model, which has no place in the global economy.

Harmonisation should be the last thing on the agenda of any national government that wishes to see its country’s economic growth rise. In contrast, a dose of genuine deregulation would bring wondrous results.

If the negotiations follow the pattern of development of the European company statute, for instance, it will be decades before we have a settled position. Continuing changes in tax rates and tax rules and the prospect of future changes are bad for business. In this report, as in early Commission reports on this subject, it is accepted as a matter of faith that the single market must be pursued without question, with the elusive level playing field as the means to achieve it.

If we are to harmonise the base for corporate tax, why insist that tax rates should not be harmonised too? It does not make sense. Like Mr Konrad, I suspect that uniform rates are on the future agenda, despite the denials. There is much to be gained from simplifying tax rules in the individual Member States, particularly the older ones, but this has to be a matter for those Member States. If the Member States see a need for cross-border cooperation on tax matters, this too should be their concern and not that of the Commission or the European Court of Justice.

My recommendation is leave it alone. Then the countries that prosper and attract investment will be those with the lowest tax rates and those with the simplest and least bureaucratic methods of assessment and collection. If taxation is to be made more business friendly, this will be at the initiative of the individual Member States and driven by market forces. I fear that coercion by the European Union is the wrong way to achieve tax reform.

Town planning is a field that needs to remain at local level in order for the needs of local areas to fall on understanding ears. A centralised policy would compound, not ameliorate, the problem. We have seen that time and time again with so-called European projects. Let me remind you of a few examples.

Firstly, we have the common fisheries policy, with its seriously damaging quota system. Hailed as an environmental project, it has done near irreparable damage to fish stocks. A huge proportion of fish processing plants in the United Kingdom have been forced to close and local fishing economies have been devastated. And how can we talk about disasters without mentioning the CAP, which created wine lakes and butter mountains and is now giving Commissioner Mandelson as much of a headache as it is the farmers in the developing world? In essence, Chirac, by protecting the little French farmer, is holding the world to ransom. Instead of stabilising the prices of primary product markets, the EU is harming the very people it says it wishes to help.

The situation facing those non-Spanish nationals in Valencia, including many UK citizens, should be dealt with on a government-to-government basis. I lament the fact that the British Government has failed to reach a bilateral agreement with Spain on this issue. Instead, we see the EU octopus bureaucracy once again using private misfortune to plunder the sovereignty of Member States.

The European Union is a self-perpetuating mega-bureaucracy that has carte blanche to finance its own programmes. I particularly oppose the allocation of funds for the brainwashing of young people, referred to in this report as being used for advancing the idea of Europe. I believe that even the most backward of students will be aware that the continent of Europe has been around for quite some time and is a bit more than an idea.

Bringing secondary school pupils to this institution for all-expenses-paid visits, during which they will be given disingenuous one-sided briefings about the wonders of the European Union, is a crude brainwashing exercise, as is the flooding of educational establishments with equally one-sided literature.

The report's repeated references to the now almost wholly discredited Lisbon Strategy hardly add to its credibility. I would urge any Member of this institution who generally believes in democracy and accountability to the electorate to vote against this budget and any other documents that purport to legitimise it.

Is there no substantial understanding of the dangers of this among the Members who sit here now, or in Parliament as a whole? Are they so utterly blind to all but the cosy platitudes of the EU's carefully engineered, hugely bribed sectoral lobbies? Mr Kristensen's contribution is scarcely more than a tiny pebble in a landslide of such similar instruments, but it illustrates well enough what is going on.

One day Members who now gape at me uncomprehendingly will experience the icy chill up the spine that I experienced today, and the sooner the better.

I have said on many other occasions that if the EU was the answer, it must have been a silly question. We can now also see how very dangerous it is.

One of the ACP countries, St Kitts and Nevis, has already stopped sugar production and it will not be an isolated case. The chairman of the ACP Sugar Group, Mr Arvin Boollel, has said that, following the EU decision, it is very likely that we are all going to suffer from the St Kitts and Nevis situation. He said: 'We have been shot in the legs and asked to run the marathon'. His country knows all about being shafted by the EU. He is the Agriculture Minister of Mauritius, one of the many developing nations subject to the EU's scandalous fishing agreements.

Only EUR 40 million is on the table. The ACP countries call it peanuts. The Jamaican Foreign Minister, Mr Knight, described it as a miserly approach, a very evocative and relevant thing to say at this time of year. It will not be a sweet Christmas for sugar producers, be they in East Anglia or East Africa. They all know that if the EU and its Scrooges are the answer, it must have been a stupid question.

This directive is really about formalising the creation of a surveillance society and the control of individuals. More and more powers are being concentrated in the hands of the state, at the expense of the individual. The UK Presidency is trying to use this Parliament to implement a policy that has already been rejected by the UK Parliament. This directive represents another step on the road to a police state. I hope this Parliament will reject it.

An exhibition that the Dutch Presidency put on in Brussels last December predicted that another ten impoverished countries will join the EU by 2022. Based on Germany's experience, the costs will be absolutely astronomical and attainable only if the big three Member States – Germany, Britain and France – are prepared to impoverish themselves in the process. It is about time we scrapped this whole crazy idea and helped out those poorer countries by creating opportunities for increased trade, tourism, etc.

I can well believe that Tony Blair will agree to impoverish Britain in his quest for European popularity, but I cannot imagine Mr Chirac doing the same thing to France.

Designed to conserve fish stocks, this misbegotten scheme has reduced some species to near extinction. Among the most depleted are the plentiful stocks once found in the North Sea and Irish Box, up until 1973 the exclusive province of British fishermen who looked after the fishing grounds and reaped a rich harvest. Then we joined the common market and the CFP, and now these seas are a marine desert in the making, if not already so.

Fair shares for all under the CFP, do I hear? If so, why does Britain have lower quotas in the waters around our shores than some other countries from further afield? And what does it profit anyone to fish our waters out? Too many boats taking too few fish is the cry. Just so. Under the CFP vast fleets of trawlers from countries previously excluded are rapaciously fishing these grounds to extinction, while fertiliser factory ships vacuum up vast quantities of marine life on the seabed, destroying the bottom of the food chain.

How could any sane person devise the CFP scheme of quotas resulting in fish caught in excess being thrown back? Do you not know that the discarded fish are dead when they are thrown back? Do you not know that for some species the annual weight of useless discards is as much as the weight of the fish legally landed? Compare that to Norway and Iceland who both refused to join the EU: their fish stocks remain plentiful and their fishing industries flourish because they look after them, forbidding discards. Meanwhile, the British fishing fleet has sunk to less than a quarter of its previous size.

Destruction of the fishing industry means that the fishermen are out of work and on benefit. It means that fishing ports are in terminal decline, so structural funds are poured in. It means that the social and economic fabric around the ports declines, while the EU claims to be combating this particular misery.

If you think this is a purely British complaint, think again. The fishing industry is a factor in the UK’s GDP to which contributions to the EU budget are geared, and that comes on top of the destruction of a priceless natural resource. And so, another Christmas goose reduces its output of golden eggs!

The second half of this scam is to declare 'zero catch', so there are no EU contributions to the country in question, and deprivation becomes acute. People from several African countries say that everyone knows the huge fraud taking place in their waters under these EU agreements.

On top of that, we have the new Seychelles agreement, following the agreements for Martinique, Madagascar and the Cape Verde Islands, agreed and approved in this House within the last year – and may I say, to the shame of this House. Modern, big EU trawlers force these local fishermen out of business, landing catches at prices with which they cannot compete. A good slice of the economy of a third world country is destroyed, all because EU fleets, due to their reckless rape of their own seas, now move on to other targets.

I note that Commissioner Borg disagreed with me in my last speech, saying that the problem was over-fishing, which is precisely what I said in my own comments. It is not long before the new waters around these islands are fished out. The EU trawlers then move on, leaving a deeply wounded economy: fishermen out of work and waters deprived of stock, so that the locals cannot restart properly.

And the EU says it wants to help the third world!

These reports highlight their levels of corruption, the proliferation of organised crime, and the need for the reform of their legal and economic systems among many other things. It is unlikely that these countries will be able to transform themselves into the paragons of virtue they are supposed to be before they can join in one year’s time.

But we all know that sadly it does not matter what state they are in. It does not matter what their levels of corruption and organised crime are. They are going to be welcomed in anyway. Their membership is part of the grand plan for the creation of a United States of Europe, and all other factors are subordinate to that ambition.

We have never been more isolated, more alienated, more disliked by our European neighbours in our entire history than we are today, sitting here in this Chamber this morning – and I guess that is why Mr Blair has sent you here today to do his dirty work. Because he promised us back in June – did he not? – that he would report back to the European Parliament as often as he could. Well he has not got the guts to turn up today. Perhaps it is the abuse, I do not know. Perhaps he is upset that Mr Barroso has likened him to the Sheriff of Nottingham. I know that many of the new Member States think that Mr Blair is behaving like Ebenezer Scrooge. Well, that is actually rather unfair because the British are still paying GBP 30 million a day into an organisation whose accounts have not been signed off for the last 11 years in a row, and we are paying our fair share of the new underground system in Warsaw, and the sewers in Budapest, and goodness knows how many hectares of French farmland.

But the ghost of Christmas past for Mr Blair will be the spectre of failure. He will not want history to see him coming out of a six-month Presidency without a deal and that is why there will be a deal. There will be a further surrender of the British rebate. And the only real victor in all of this is Mr Barroso! And my goodness me, Mr Barroso, you could do with a few successes, could you not? You wrote to Mr Blair on 20 October with five proposals to relaunch negotiations, and the British Presidency has followed those to the letter, including accepting that in 2008 there will be a complete review of the EU budget, when the whole of the UK rebate will be on the table. So there will be a deal over the next couple of days, but it will not settle the matter.

I have a positive proposal for all of you.

(Interjection from the floor: 'No!')

Yes, honestly! Why do we not extend the British Presidency for a further six months? Six more months of the Foreign Office, Mr Blair and Mr Alexander, six more months of this, and it will be obvious to all that the United Kingdom is a square peg in a round European hole. A global trading nation that is very proud of its recent history does not belong, does not fit in with this club and, from your perspective, we are like the dog in the manger, are we not? We are always holding you up. We are always stopping you. Get rid of us! Kick us out! Expel us! You can then carry on with your projects and we can get back to running our own country. It is not just a question of 'we want our money back – we want our country back!'

(Applause)