European Council

Conor Burns Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is entirely right that we should support Frontex in its work and that we should support the action that Schengen members are taking to secure Europe’s external borders. That is vital because, as he says, many of those people do not stay in Greece but come to Paris or London. I do not think it is any contradiction to say that we should support that action while at the same time maintaining our own border controls and arrangements, particularly with the French, that have done us proud in recent years.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

The Prime Minister will have spoken for the overwhelming majority in this country when he expressed his anger at the proposed £280 million new European headquarters. Was any progress made at this Council meeting in implementing the coalition agreement’s aspiration to end the obscenity of the European Parliament moving between Brussels and Strasbourg, wasting a huge amount of money? Does he agree that anybody who does not agree with those points is, to use a phrase coined at that Dispatch Box, living in cloud-cuckoo land?

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid that I cannot give my hon. Friend much satisfaction because the fact that the European Parliament moves between those two cities was not discussed at the European Council. Indeed, the problem that I have referred to in relation to the new building rather shows that there are too many people in Brussels who do not understand the need to cut their cloth according to what is available—by passing around a very expensive brochure to a very expensive new building.