EU Council

David Rutley Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We have just done a major piece of work to see how best we can strengthen the ISC, and put those proposals in front of the House. I think we should let those settle down before we consider other changes.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement and, particularly, the recommendations of his business taskforce. It is good to hear that those recommendations were endorsed by more than 100 businesses in the EU. Will he tell the House what further steps will be taken to engage yet more businesses across the EU to ensure that we make even faster progress on this vital agenda?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. There is a good dialogue in this country between business and the Government on the cost of regulation and the things that need to change. I am not sure that that debate takes place in the other European countries, so I have asked the authors of the excellent report—who include a number of very senior business leaders in Britain—and Ministers to do a tour of European capitals to try to get European business leaders and European alternatives to the CBI together and to encourage them to lobby their Governments, so that we can really get the issues of deregulation and cost reduction hard-wired throughout the European system.