G20

Glenda Jackson Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, we need to disconnect the issues that my hon. Friend raises. The issue of the single market and the threat to the City of London and Britain’s financial services is a real threat. We have to work extremely hard to build alliances in the single market and in the European Council to stop directives that would damage our interests. I think it is extremely important that we do that work. Financial services matter hugely to this country, and this is one of the areas that I want to ensure we can better safeguard in future.

I do not support fiscal union. I do not think that Britain ought to join a fiscal union, as I do not think that is the right move for us. However, we have a single currency that is quite dysfunctional, and one way in which it could be made more functional is greater fiscal union. That is a statement of fact rather than our saying that we want in any way to join it: we do not. We want to safeguard the interests of Britain by making sure that the single market works for us.

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

Is it really in the best long-term interests of this country for the Government consistently to present the United Kingdom as the neighbour from hell with regard to the European Union—not least with regard to the Tobin tax? The issues on which the European Union wishes to spend money are the issues on which the Prime Minister’s constituents and mine, and citizens around the world, wish to see money spent—not least on alleviating suffering in the third world and on climate change. Will he change his mind on this issue?

[The Prime Minister]

With great respect to the hon. Lady, this Government—and to an extent the Governments whom she supported—have made and kept promises about things that our constituents care about, such as development and climate change. We are meeting those. As for being a good neighbour, one of the most unneighbourly acts someone could perform when the whole world is looking at growing the resources of the IMF to safeguard the global economy is to walk away from that and vote against it—something that I know that quite a lot of Labour MPs, probably including some on the Front Bench, are rather ashamed of. Such an act would show them to be not only not a good neighbour, but on another planet.