Orders of the Day — European Communities

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 27 October 1971.

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Photo of Mr Anthony Barber Mr Anthony Barber , Altrincham and Sale 12:00, 27 October 1971

Two or three other points have been raised in this debate, as they were in July. The first is the effect of joining on our balance of payments and on the competitiveness of our economy. It is said that after our consideration was complete and we set out our conclusions in the White Paper we should have provided more statistics, and more facts. I dealt with that at some length during the debate in July, but the real point is, what possible advantage can there be in deploying spurious quantifications of one kind or another, with all the meretricious appeal of exact figures, when, in all honesty, we know that in some instances the magnitudes simply cannot be predicted?

It has been alleged from the benches opposite that we have refused to indicate the range of possible British contributions to the Community Budget between 1977 and 1980. But the Labour Government's White Paper gave a range of the total balance of payments effect of membership as being between £100 million and £1,100 million, and such figures, as almost every commentator said at the time, are utterly useless.