EU: Disintegration

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The details of this have been set out, particularly by my right honourable friend the Minister for Europe in front of the Lords European Union Committee the other day. I recommend that the noble Lord reads them. They are very detailed and answer his question very closely. Broadly, however, the preparations were of course there but had to be conditional on the initial drafts of what was going to be, and now is becoming, the intergovernmental agreement. It was presented in the first instance in December as a treaty for the 27. The draft of that was available only 24 hours before the actual meeting, so inevitably there had to be some last-minute reactions and adjustments, but at the end of it all it was perfectly clear that the safeguards sought by the Prime Minister were not going to be available and that haggling over an intergovernmental treaty that other members wanted to achieve rapidly would have been very disruptive. The best way was simply to say that we did not wish to be part of it, and that is what happened.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, if we are so influential in Europe, what are the Government doing to ensure that the financial framework matches the plans for 2020? At the moment, the common financial framework has not been adjusted to the 2020 planning, particularly regarding the work on the common agricultural policy, where a huge amount of funding continues to go into non-innovative processes.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Well, we are. The Government and many outside government continue to work to strengthen and reform all aspects of the European Union. The common agricultural policy is by no means set in concrete and certainly requires reform, as do infrastructure fund arrangements and many aspects of financial regulation, all of which can be improved. We are working away at those things all the time.