EU Council

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Clearly, if we had been able to achieve the protocol on financial services there would have been greater safeguards, but the safeguard we do have is that we are not signing up to a treaty that could have put that industry in danger.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his bold and courageous stance in the early hours of the morning last Friday and I should like to pass on the thanks that many of my constituents have expressed to me over the weekend. Will he confirm that of the nations at the European Council that did sign up to an agreement, the Parliaments of Bulgaria, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania and others such as Hungary still need to approve and ratify it?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We do not yet know exactly how the new organisation and treaty will develop or how many countries will sign up to it. There will then be a huge process involving very detailed scrutiny by and punishment from the European Commission if Governments draw up inappropriate budgets or have a structural deficit of greater than 0.5%. Labour left us a structural deficit of—what was it?—7% or 8%? There are big processes to go through before the treaty is either finalised in March or implemented, for which it will again have to be put to Parliaments and, possibly, even to referendums as well. There are many hoops to go through.