The technical answer is that the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate withdrew his name from the motion. That does not answer the question how he came to be facing in both directions in such a short time. The House would not be expected to believe that such a mass conversion was the product of individual contemplation by each of those 68 hon. Members. When yesterday's Order Paper reached the highest authority in the land an explosion occurred, the shock-waves of which were felt yesterday everywhere throughout the building when the hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones) and his confederates were trying to lay their hands on one of their Back Benchers.

It was impossible at one stage yesterday for hon. Members to enter the Library and go about their business because the hon. Member for Watford was conducting impromptu seminars on the correct Government line on own resources. I was not privileged to be present at such seminars, but the story as reported to me was that those hon. Members who had signed the early-day motion had been misled as to the Government's current position on own resources. I shall not comment on whether the diligent Conservative Members who assembled the early-day motion would have misled their colleagues.

I draw the attention of the House to the fact that the Government's position on own resources is so opaque that nearly half of the Conservative Back Benchers cannot figure out what it is without the aid of a Whip. One can forgive them their confusion. The Government's position on own resources has undergone a rapid change in the past year. We may not have discovered the dynamic effects on our economy since entering the EEC, but we have discovered a dynamic effect on the Government's position as to own resources.

The Foreign Secretary said, if I heard him correctly, that at no time has he ruled out an increase in own resources. The right hon. and learned Gentleman may reflect that when he was Chancellor of the exchequer, and I was one of his shadows, a debate took place in February on the 1983 European Community budget. During the opening of the debate the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the present Secretary of State for Transport, said: No one has yet demonstrated that an increase in own resources is necessary. The hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) will be interested to hear the words of the then Financial Secretary, when he said: If agricultural expenditure is properly controlled, the Community's existing revenues should provide the necessary financial resources for the development of the Community policies and, indeed, for enlargement. If the House was left in any doubt about the Government's position, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Rifkind) said: The Government have not changed their view. As the hon. Gentleman was speaking a full five hours, he was wise to make that statement later. No argument can be put forward with any conviction that it is necessary or desirable to increase the own resources of the Community."—[Official Report, 21 February 1983; Vol. 31, c. 670–744.] I understand why the 121 Conservative hon. Members thought that they were positively supporting that position of the Government. I can understand their being aggrieved at being taken aside by the hon. Member for Watford and cuffed about the ears for lending support to such a positon. The truth is that the Government's position has changed.

I understand from his speech today that the Foreign Secretary believes that there may possibly be a case for increasing own resurces. I shall not go so far as to say that the right hon. Gentleman advanced the belief "with any conviction", to quote the words of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands, but he appeared to be advancing a case for an increase in own resources.

The Government have dug a trap for themselves. At Stuttgart, in the summer, they allowed themselves to be backed into a position in which an equivalence was established between the increase in own resources and a solution to the budgetary and agricultural expenditure problems. From then on we were expected by our partners to make a concession on own resources in return for a decent deal on the budget and a sensible approach to agricultural expenditure.

Nothing has happened since February to change the merits of the case or to alter the argument advanced with such vigour by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands and by the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The documents before the House confirm the case against any increase in own resources.

Commission document No. 6863, which refers to the future financing of the Community, sets out the own resources which the Commission has it in mind to impose. That should be a matter of grave concern to all hon. Members. Paragraph 15 of the document proposes a tax on the domestic consumption of energy. Such a tax would be designed to penalise northern countries to the advantage of southern countries. As Britain is almost the most northerly country in the European Community, the tax would bear disproportionately heavily on us.

I understand that the proposal is unacceptable to the Government. I assure the Foreign Secretary that in rejecting the proposal he will have the full support of the Opposition. One of the reasons why we will give him our full support in rejecting a European tax on domestic energy is that it would be imposed on top of an already iniquitous British tax on domestic energy which leaves gas more expensive than is necessary for every consumer from ICI to every state pensioner. We applaud the recognition that apparently exists in the Foreign Office that such a tax could not in addition withstand a European tax placed upon it, but we hope that it will make available the negotiating brief to the Chancellor so that he can reconsider the domestic as well as the European tax on energy.

The main burden of an own resources increase will come from an increase in VAT from 1 to 1·4 per cent. I wish to dispel a common delusion. I am grateful to the Scrutiny Committee for setting out the figures so clearly. At present Britian does not merely contribute 1 percentage point of VAT to the Community, but the 1 percentage point is levied on a notional harmonised VAT base. As the EC assumes that VAT is applied to goods to which not even this Government have dared apply it, there is a tax take from Britain well in excess of 1 percentage point of VAT. It currently stands at 1·7 percentage points. If a notional increase to 1·4 per cent. occurred, we would be handling to the EC a full 2 percentage points of the VAT, which is equivalent to more than one seventh of our total VAT take.

The document makes a further suggestion, which I regard as bordering on impertinence. On top of the first increase to 1·4 per cent. of VAT, further tranches should be made of 0·4 per cent. VAT, which could be levied without reference to the national Parliaments of the EC by a three quarters Majority of the European Assembly. There can be no question—the Foreign Secretary must be in no doubt about this matter—of this Chamber giving up its sole right to approve taxation levied in Britain. The right to control supply was a right fought for by our predecessors, a struggle in which not a few of them died. Such a right is the precious heritage of each and every hon. Member. It is not for inclusion in a package of bargaining measures in Brussels, and is not to be bargained away in return for a super levy on dairy products.

Nothing in the Commission's document tackles the fundamental problem of the structural defects in the system that leave Britain trapped as a persistent net contributor to the budget. It proposes a modulation of VAT, but it would be in such a low key that it would still leave Britain the second largest net contributor, although the seventh poorest member state. Even more remarkable, if enlargement takes place it would still leave Portugal, one of the poorest nations in Europe, as a net contributor to the EC budget. That is a grotesque outcome.

I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Mr. Johnston) in his place, as I understand that we are to be treated to a speech from him later. On 14 November, during the report by the Foreign Secretary on the Foreign Council meeting, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber raised doubts that the Government's position on budgetary contributions might impede the objective of the EC in obtaining the economic convergence of the economies of the member states. I find it a remarkable tribute to the blindness of alliance Members in their infatuation with Europe — [HON. MEMBERS: "Where are they?"] The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber is a fair representative of them all. We can quite happily settle for him. They are so blinded by their infatuation for Europe that during the whole 10 years of debate on the British budgetary contribution they have missed the entire point, which is that the budgetary system, far from promoting convergence of the economies of the EC, actually promotes their divergence by obliging the poor to subsidise the rich.

If alliance Members turn up in greater numbers we shall be interested to see what they do at the conclusion of the debate. Will their infatuation lead them to vote in favour of an increase in the ceiling of own resources so that the poor nations may subsidise the rich nations to an even greater extent?

Nothing in the documents that relate to revenue justifies a change in the Government's position on own resources. Does anything relating to expenditure justify such a change? The documents, far from justifying a change, confirm the correctness of the Government's position last February.

The very next document is a report by the Court of Auditors. Its preface contains the strongest possible case against an increase in own resources. It states: It was only when the risk of reaching the limit of 1 per cent. VAT own resources became a reality that public attention was focused on the possibilities of making Community expenditure more effective. If the limit has obliged the EC to have regard to the effectiveness of its expenditure, what possible incentive could there he for us now to raise and remove that limit?

I do not wish to trench on the issues of the next debate, but it is impossible to have regard to expenditure without making some mention of the CAP, which swallows two thirds of expenditure—10 times the sum going to the regional or social funds, and the sole source of this year's budget crisis because of the staggering 30 per cent. increase in agricultural expenditure this year.

The picture that emerges from the Court of Auditors report is of an incoherent, self-contradictory, inefficient agricultural system, in which the subsidies vary arbitrarily product by product, farmer by farmer and country by country. Britain now has the entirely unforseen development of a cauliflower mountain, as well as our other mountains. Last year the Minister purchased under Intervention 8,200 tonnes of cauliflower. I am advised that at Sainsburys today an average cauliflower weighs 700 grams. The statistics department has worked out that that means that last year the Minister consumed and bought under intervention 12 million British cauliflower. It would require Salvador Dali to do justice to the mound of 12 million cauliflower being bought and destroyed under intervention. Cauliflower which the British public either did not want or could not afford were brought into existence simply by the bizarre workings of the agriculture system.

A year ago there was brave talk of the reform of the CAP, but "reform" now appears to be a word that has disappeared from the vocabulary of the debate. I did not hear it used once by the Foreign Secretary during his address. It is not used in the Community document before us. Document No. 8823 refers not to the reform of the CAP, but to its adaptation. The Damascus Amendment refers not to the reform of the CAP, but to arrangements satisfactory to Her Majesty's Government". Nobody is talking about a change in the structure of the CAP to carry out a root and branch reform of the structural surpluses. The Government are proposing to settle for a limit on the increase in annual costs of the CAP. There is ample evidence that Ministers do not expect to achieve that. They may be influenced by what The Economist indelicately referred to as "the barn-full of farmers" in the Cabinet.

A fortnight ago the Chancellor came before the House with his autumn statement. It provided for an increase in expenditure under the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. I have before me the statement made by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food about next year's expenditure. He said: This is £437 million higher than previously planned. Of this sum, £422 million provides for additional expenditure by the Intervention Board for Agricultural Produce, mainly in respect of an expected increase in the level of intervention for butter and skimmed milk powder; the remaining £15 million is a net increase in planned expenditure" — [Official Report, 17 November 1983; Vol. 48, c. 557.] In other words, of the £437 million increase in agricultural expenditure next year, £15 million is for planned expenditure and £422 million—a 50 per cent. increase — is for increased intervention under the CAP. It is plain that neither the Chancellor nor the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food expects the Foreign Secretary to succeed in obtaining tight controls on the CAP. Possibly, and more sinisterly, the Cabinet does not expect the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister seriously to try to succeed if it damages the interests of the farmers.

Whether we look at the documents that deal with revenue or those that deal with expenditure, there are no grounds for the Government shifting from the position that they took on own resources last February. Nor is Athens the time to abandon that position. Athens finds the Community in crisis and obliged by the ceiling on its expenditure to confront the contradictions in its policy. It provides a window of opportunity for Britain. It is the best moment to oblige the Community to face the changes that it needs to make. It is the very last moment to raise the ceiling to enable the Community to escape from facing the changes; to enable it to continue to squander expenditure on its absurd agricultural policy and to extort more revenue from the British to pay for it.

This is the last opportunity for the House to voice its opinion before Athens. I urge the House not to let this opportunity slip from its grasp, but to sieze it and use this debate to make an unequivocal declaration that neither in present circumstances nor in immediately forseeable circumstances will this House accept an increase in the own resources of the EC.