European Affairs

Debate between Lord Hague of Richmond and Ian Davidson

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

A lot of hon. Members want to intervene, so I will try to fit them in. We will go to Glasgow first, because the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson) has made great contributions to such debates in the past.

[Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on his new appointment. There is undoubtedly a crisis within the eurozone, but does he not agree that there is a danger that those in Brussels will simply see this as an opportunity to accrete more power to themselves, centralise still further, and that their analysis will be that the solution to the problem is more Europe, not less. What steps will the Government take to ensure that that does not happen, and that Britain is not sucked into the black hole of the eurozone?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman is right about that. I am about to come to that point in my speech, so I will address the matter in a moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davidson]

Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman has returned. I will give way to him so that he can nip out again while I answer his question.

[Mr Davidson]

In my defence, I came back. I had to leave because I had visitors—I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for that. I explained to them that the joys of listening to him were greater than those of meeting them. They are not voters in my constituency, which makes it a great deal easier to say that.

On the coherence of Government policy on Europe, given that financial cuts are being made across the Government’s budget, will the Foreign Secretary give us a guarantee that a cut will also be applied to the contribution that the EU receives from this country? Otherwise, there will be inconsistency.

[Mr Hague]

There may well be inconsistency. The hon. Gentleman knows that I cannot give him such a guarantee, which is why he enjoyed coming back into the Chamber to ask the question. The contribution is not immediately under the Government’s control, but is the product of differences in agricultural payments, VAT payments and so on. It is regrettable, as I said earlier, that the Government whom he largely supported—his Front Benchers do not recognise that description of him; perhaps I should say, “the Government he was elected to support in the past”—gave away £7 billion of our rebate while securing nothing in return. He can be assured that we will not do that, and that will help keep the payments down, but it is not possible to vary them by unilateral Executive action.