The debate has been both wide-ranging and very detailed in its study of Community policies and of United Kingdom policies. It has focused on the problems posed by the internal market and the problems that have also recently arisen from trade difficulties between Europe and the United States; it has focused on the large sums spent by the agricultural fund and the small amounts made available for the regional fund.

We have had speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Wansbeck (Mr. Thompson), for Easington (Mr. Dormand), who focused on the problems of the northern area, for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing), who pinpointed the problems faced by the north-west, for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman), who made a number of very positive suggestions about how Government regional aid could be increased and spent, and for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. McKay) who also made suggestions about the coal industry and spending on infrastructure. All these speeches have demonstrated concern about unemployment both in Europe as a whole and in this country, where it is felt particularly acutely. They have also expressed our concern that things should be done by both the European Community and this Government.

I make no apology for concentrating the bulk of my remarks on one of the major submissions made by the Government to the European Commission in the past year—our submission to the European regional development fund. It showed that the gap between the rich and poor regions of this country is widening, that the shires and suburbs and the inner cities and industrial towns have even less in common after seven years of this Government, that the gap between rich and poor is not temporary but threatens to become ineradicable as a result of the Government's policies. I want to suggest how, by their failure to secure proper funding from the European regional development fund, their failure to secure proper guarantees about the movement towards an internal market, but most of all by their failure to secure a proper regional policy in the United Kingdom, the Government are exacerbating the Division between the rich and poor areas of the country.

We have heard from the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) who made a charge against the Government, that money apparently gained in December by reducing the agricultural budget is money bought at the price of having to increase the contribution of member states. Before the end of the debate, the House deserves an answer from the Minister of State. We need to know whether the Government or the Commission have been guilty of the sort of creative accounting over the agricultural surpluses that might make even their friends in the City blush.

We have also heard an interesting set of proposals about the future of the agricultural fund. We heard from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. King), who spent a large part of his time dwelling on the Government's success story in relation to British Leyland, just on the day when British Leyland appears to have announced another 1,000 redundancies in the midlands and elsewhere.

The hon. Member put forward a proposal for supermarket Euro-zones and asked about the distribution of agricultural surpluses to pensioners and others. We deserve from the Minister an explanation of how this distribution of stocks will take place throughout the country. Without a clear explanation of who gets what, how it is to be distributed and how many people are to receive it, I fear that there will be no distribution system at all.

By relying on unfunded charities, we will return to the queues of the soup kitchen society that many fear the Government are to impose anyway on this country by social security policies. Given the spending on agricultural policy that British taxpayers have to bear and the fact that food prices are higher in Britain as a result, it is not Europe that is subsidising the poor families of this country, it is the poor families of this country who, for years, have been subsidising Europe and the agricultural policy.

As a newcomer to these debates I was drawn to a series of Community publications, and indeed publications by the British Government, in the hope that I would secure some enlightenment about some of the more detailed policies being pursued by the Government in Europe and by the European Community. I rather wish now that I had left aside some of the publications that I bothered to consult. One publication that the House of Commons Library put in front of me and that I started to read with interest was entitled "The United Kingdom Presidency July to December 1986". It started by saying: The attached note lists achievements in the Community during the United Kingdom presidency".

Our presidency saw the biggest budget crisis ever, the biggest budget deficit in the Community's history and, despite the recent agreements that the Minister of State heralded to the House, the biggest agricultural surpluses ever, a European economic report to the effect that unemployment will not fall this year, next year or in the foreseeable future in any substantial way, and a community regional report stating that regional disparities were about the widest ever.

These are events which, we are to believe from the Government's report to the House of Commons, are achievements of the United Kingdom presidency. To talk of these so-called successes and achievements when they range from the negative to the negligible is bad enough, but to hear the Minister speak of further successes over the next few months is another example of the triumph of hope over experience. I read with interest the claim about United Kingdom achievements over the six months of its presidency in a newspaper report of a speech made by the Prime Minister to the European Parliament, or the European Assembly, as some people would call it. That speech was at pains to emphasise the achievements of the United Kingdom presidency.

The report said that the Prime Minister stated: I do not believe we should under-estimate the achievements of the last six months. The Prime Minister then proceeded to talk about achievements in terms of helping the unemployed at a time when European unemployment is still more than 16 million. Then she said that Britain would continue to lead the pack in facing the real problems. The newspaper report finished by saying: Mrs. Thatcher's address made little impact on a sceptical House". This was in a House where the Conservatives have a Majority, we are led to believe.

With European unemployment above 16 million, with 6 million under the age of 25 unemployed throughout the European Community, with the recognition that unemployment is not getting better but will remain at this all-time high, and with the economic report, one would think that the United Kingdom's problems will not get better.

We have heard the Prime Minister promise that we will return to full employment. Therefore, one might think that the initiatives on unemployment taken during the United Kingdom presidency were substantial — perhaps a European new deal, a European renewal project, a European war against unemployment, a European war against poverty by creating jobs and improving the infrastructure of this country. But we have not got any of these things. There is no great new initiative, no new programmes of public spending on infrastructure investment and no programmes to improve manufacturing investment. What we have from the United Kingdom, in association with Italy and Ireland, is not a policy to reduce unemployment but a substitute for a policy. In December, the Financial Times called it an apology for a policy on unemployment.

The Government's presidency and their actions in Europe have done little to create jobs or to reduce unemployment. That could not be emphasised better than by referring to the shipbuilding industry, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow. During the United Kingdom presidency, the Government started negotiations, chaired by Trade and Industry Ministers, for a new European directive on shipbuilding. They commissioned an independent report that said that unless the cost subsidy was 36 per cent. we could not bridge the gap between the highly subsidised far eastern shipyards and European yards.

That report was accepted as both independent and excellent. There was evidence from European shipbuilders that subsidies had to be above 30 per cent. The Government were told by British Shipbuilders that unless they secured 33 per cent., the future of the only two remaining big yards, at Govan and in the north-east, would be at risk and the work force might fall from 6,000 to 800. The Government had all that evidence before them when they were chairing the negotiations; yet, after hard negotiation in Europe, they ended up with an agreement for only a 28 per cent. subvention. That is a betrayal of British shipbuilding and puts at risk many hundreds of jobs and communities in the north of England and Scotland.

It is amazing that we, the biggest island trading nation in Europe, with most to gain from a strong shipbuilding policy in Europe, should have agreed to such a level of subsidy. That is the record of the United Kingdom presidency in protecting and creating jobs and in reducing unemployment.

The submission made by the Government to the European regional development fund has been commented upon by my hon. Friends because of its implications for each region. That submission states not as an assumption but as a projection that unemployment will be. above 3 million not just next year but in 1990. For the Government to say that the prospects for Scotland, the west midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, the north-west and the north are bleak, frighteningly bleak or gloomy, and that it is impossible to reduce unemployment until fundamental problems have been resolved, is an admission of the depths to which they have brought the economy; it is an admission also of the measures that need to be taken to put the economy in order.

What is as bad is that the Government have admitted what is needed, but are unprepared to do it. Throughout the regional reports that are in the House of Commons Library and available to hon. Members but not to the public, there is a recognition of the infrastructure problems that require money to be spent upon them. They also contain a recognition of the problems faced by manufacturing industry that require extraordinary measures if they are to be resolved and, most important of all, a recognition of the importance of public spending, which the Government have denigrated for the past seven years. The Government have failed to provide solutions to these problems.

I shall quote from some of the most important conclusions of the regional reports so that Conservative Members can see what their Government have been telling Europe about the problems that have been created during the past seven years. On Greater Manchester, the report states that replacement work on roads, sewers, water supply, railways and building stock has not kept pace with the rate of decay resulting in a serious situation in which some aspects of the infrastructure are in a state of collapse. These deficiencies result in a great deal of inefficiency in the functioning of the urban system". The report goes on to state: real dangers exist from sewer collapse and pollution. On the west midlands, the report states: The cumulative effect of under-investment in apprenticeships and in modern plant and machinery will affect the ability of the region to take advantage of any increase in demand.