European Council

Anne Main Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The short answer is that if we were to leave the EU, we would not be able to get those funds, which have made a big difference in parts of Wales, in parts of England—for instance, in Cornwall—and in other parts of our country. I am someone who wants to keep the EU budget down, and we achieved the historic decision to cut it, but I think we should be frank that some of the work that the EU has done in poorer countries in other parts of the EU has helped those economies to grow. They are all customers of ours, so whether it is Bulgaria, Romania, Greece or wherever, their economic development is in our interests.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

In January, I introduced a Bill to try to protect our children from flammable costumes—to protect children from going up in flames. I pulled the Bill this month after discussions with officials from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who told me that the matter comes under harmonised legislation. Thousands of directives are spewed out from Brussels every year with which the Government have to comply. We cannot even protect our own children on something so fundamental, because we do not have control without the permission of Brussels.

[The Prime Minister]

I will look carefully at the case my hon. Friend has mentioned, because I know that such things can be frustrating. In the area of foam-filled furniture and foam-filled mattresses, we have taken steps over and above what other EU countries have done, and that has kept our own people safer. The other thing I would say is that a lot of different figures are bandied about on the matter, but if she looks in the House of Commons Library, she will see that far from the very high figures quoted by some, more like 13%, 14% or 15% of laws come to us from that direction.