19 NOVEMBER 1994, Page 42

Sub up for Europe

I COULD have saved Kenneth Clarke the trouble of writing 330 letters to Conserva- tive MPs, urging them to vote even more money for the Euro-budget — just a £75- million top-up. Our subscription this year is supposed to be £1.35 billion. The Trea- sury forecast that next year's would be £2.9 billion, with another £2.9 billion the year after. Now it has quietly changed its forecast. It expects that, in the next two years, our subscription will go up to £3.5 billion. Mr Clarke has not announced these embarrassing figures. Instead, he let them be droned out by a junior social security minister in the House of Lords, which paid not the slightest attention to them. The Treasury's old hands have not lost their cunning.