mr president i am delighted to agree with mr portas and the communist group on this issue
all across europe from ireland to latvia governments are struggling to respond to the financial crisis to the credit crunch by reducing their costs but we in this house uniquely in this house are massively increasing our expenditure in both relative and absolute terms
we are increasing the perks and the budgets available to members and to staff
the justification which is given in this report is a very interesting one because the reason that we are told we need all of this extra spending is because of the additional responsibilities created by the lisbon treaty
in a way that is true but i think not in the way that the authors intended it
what we see is that the bureaucracy is expanding to service the needs of the bureaucracy
the primary function of the lisbon treaty is to provide additional work and additional revenue for all the tens of thousands who are now directly or indirectly dependent on the european union for their livelihoods
the one lot of people that we have not consulted about this are the electorates and i would love to see issues like this put before our voters to see whether they approve of our voting ourselves additional resources at such a time when now all of them are tightening their own belts
