Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Lidington and Robert Walter

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware that considerable legal and other measures already exist on both sides of the Atlantic to secure proper protection for workers, and those matters are indeed in the minds of negotiators. However, I do not think that we should take our eyes off the enormous prize that a trade deal of this kind would represent in increasing economic growth and mutual trade on both sides of the Atlantic.

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that those who campaign for us to leave the European Union would be turning their backs on a free trade area constituting some 40% of the productive wealth of the world, and that we would be unlikely to negotiate similar terms outside the Union?

[Mr Lidington]

I think it is true that the opportunity for a trade deal with a market of more than 500 million people in Europe as a whole is more attractive to United States negotiators than a trade deal with any single European country. Moreover, as my hon. Friend says, any member state that left the European Union would, unless alternative arrangements were negotiated, be abandoning the free trade agreements that the Union had negotiated with other countries around the world.

European Union

Debate between David Lidington and Robert Walter

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The hon. Gentleman has had a chance, and I want to make some progress.

The stock of inward foreign direct investment in the UK from the EU has risen by 800% in less than 10 years, and our membership of the EU single market helps to attract the other half of our FDI, from non-EU investors, who see the UK as a platform from which to break into European trade and access the wider single market.

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

Will the Minister confirm to the House that Norway also has access to the single market, as a member of the European economic area, and in return has a better record in implementing EU directives, in which it has no say, than we do?

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend makes the point well. Countries in the European economic area have to comply with EU regulations and implement them fully if they are to have the single market access that we enjoy by virtue of our membership. If we were in a comparable position, British business would have to meet the costs of compliance with whatever regulatory standards the UK decided to impose, in addition to the costs of meeting the differing standards of the remaining EU bloc or any of the other European countries with which they wished to trade.

Council of Europe (UK Chairmanship)

Debate between David Lidington and Robert Walter

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

Ambitions must sometimes be tempered by the need to obtain the necessary consensus. In the context of getting 46 other countries to agree, the freeze that I talked about is a pretty good outcome. Further encouragement is that the combination of the freeze in the Council of Europe’s budget and the recalculation of the relative contributions of member states to that budget means that the United Kingdom will pay a smaller proportion in 2012 than we did in 2011. That is a good outcome of our negotiations.

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

Discussions on the budget take place in Strasbourg, and 27 of the 47 member states are members of the European Union. Those 27 member states are sitting idly by while the Fundamental Rights Agency, which was established in Vienna and has some spurious objectives, increases its budget for allegedly doing a human rights job on behalf of the 27 states.

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend, who is the leader of the United Kingdom delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, makes his point cogently. He tempts me on to a much bigger debate about European Union expenditure, but I will confine myself to the matter before us.

The Government take the need for budgetary control over European Union agencies very seriously indeed. The growth of such expenditure and the proliferation of agencies within the European Union have been overlooked for too long. We have been making strong representations to the Commission about that, and have sought to build alliances with other EU member states to secure the sort of reform and budgetary discipline that my hon. Friend rightly wants.