George Osborne accused of con trick over £1.7bn EU bill

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/10/george-osborne-con-trick-eu-bill-ed-balls

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George Osborne did not raise a single complaint about Britain’s £1.7bn EU backdated bill and did not manage to get a single penny off the total, Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, has said.

Balls said it was a con trick that took the British people for fools, after the chancellor claimed to have reduced the bill to £850m at an EU meeting on Friday by negotiating to make sure the UK’s rebate applied.

Balls also joked that he could barely see John Bercow, the Speaker, for all Osborne’s “fog and bluster”, because it was always obvious that the UK would get its usual discount on the bill. A statement from the European budget commissioner on 27 October proves the rebate was always going to apply and was never in doubt, Balls said.

Addressing the chancellor, Balls said: “Isn’t the truth the chancellor has failed to reduce our contribution by a single penny?

“All he is doing is simply counting the rebate that was due anyway, a rebate that was never in doubt, trying to fool people into thinking the bill has been halved. His so-called victory is nothing more than a con trick.”

He said minutes from the EU meeting showed Osborne did not object to the bill and questioned Treasury claims that the chancellor had received legal advice casting doubt on whether the rebate would be applied.

But Osborne pointed out that Balls did not mention the application of the discount when the latter, in an article for the Guardian, set out the sum that the UK would have to pay, along with interest payments based on the £1.7bn total.

Posing in the Commons with a copy of the newspaper, the chancellor said it was “not clear” before the meeting that the rebate would apply, reducing the total to £850m. “If it was the case that was always going to apply, why was it not mentioned before?” he said.

Osborne said the UK’s bill had been halved from £1.7bn, had been delayed until 2015-16 and would include no interest.

The chancellor was backed by supportive Tory MPs. But the pro-Europe former cabinet minister Ken Clarke cast doubt on the idea that the chancellor had won a great battle.

He said it was a “surprisingly good” deal but probably the result of a friendly chat rather than “gunfight at the OK Corral”.