I HAVE been a big critic of Mr Blair but he deserves praise for his decision to compromise on the European budget to help the ten new arrivals of the EU.

Mr Cameron and the Tories will never understand the basic tenet that the more the State helps the poor the more everyone in the State benefits. It's a case of same old Tory same old story - headline grabbing rather than headline facts.

The annual compromise by the UK of £1 billion represents only 0.1 per cent of annual GDP.

Another fact is that Mrs Thatcher herself understood the importance of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the need for Europe to have plentiful supply of cheap food. What has happened is the CAP has been so successful that European-produced food is being destroyed to benefit the currencies of Europe, resulting in financial damage to countries in Africa, which can't compete.

The CAP has been reduced in recent years from 60 per cent of the EU budget to 40 per cent, so progress has been made. But it benefits the wealthy landowners like the Queen and the Duke of Westminster rather than the ordinary farmer, which is patently ridiculous.

Further progress has to be made to use more of the CAP to pay for new crops such as those which fuel biomass power stations to get more value for money.

It should be remembered too that another famous Tory, serving as a young army officer in the devastated war-time Germany, realised that Europe must work together to prevent such destruction from ever happening again. His name was Edward Heath, the Tory Prime Minister who took Britain into Europe.

T Scaife,

Manor Drive North,

York.

Updated: 10:54 Thursday, December 22, 2005