EU: Repatriation of Powers

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are now facing a clear difference of timescale in the things under way. There is a real urgency about managing the eurozone crisis. That is a matter of weeks. Examining the balance of competences within the European Union is a much longer-term investigation, with which the British Government are engaged, and on which we expect to have plenty of allies among the other member states of the European Union.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, would my noble friend accept that, in a spirit of constructive engagement, the Prime Minister has made it very clear that he is not about to go to the European Council with a shopping list of powers to be repatriated, that the coalition agreement did not envisage that, that the coalition agreement envisaged only a review of the working time directive and that the repatriation of powers is not on the agenda here and now?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we all recognise that Britain’s future economic prosperity depends on the eurozone not collapsing and that it is therefore very strongly in our interest to do everything we can to assist in the management of this current crisis. Britain’s priorities are: first, to maintain the integrity of the EU 27; secondly, to maintain and strengthen the single market; thirdly, to promote recovery and economic growth; fourthly, to defend specific British interests in financial services; fifthly, to ensure that social and employment legislation does not hold back growth; and also to rebalance competence away from detailed regulations on matters better left to national, regional or local government.