European Council

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As I said in my statement, we need to achieve the best of both worlds in which we recognise the advantages of being in a reformed European Union while ensuring that this is a membership and a type of European Union that suit us. If we look at what has been achieved in the past, through maintaining our own currency and having a single market, we can see that that is the sort of approach we need for the future.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

It is now almost 12 years since I chaired a group examining the role of national Parliaments, which came up with the idea of a red card system. It is good to see some ideas being recycled. We also concluded that unless there was a mechanism whereby national Parliaments were co-ordinated—a kind of COSAC but without MEPs—any such system would be utterly meaningless. Will the Prime Minister tell us what negotiations he has had on the development of such networks?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right; it has taken far too long to get this sort of change in place. This is, however, exactly the sort of change that the British process of renegotiation and a referendum is putting squarely on the table. I shall look carefully at her suggestion as we go into the detailed phase of the negotiations to ensure that we get the right sort of deal.