EU: Reform

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Dykes]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proposals for reform of the European Union they will present to the forthcoming meeting of the European Council.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the agenda for the forthcoming European Council on 22 May is tax, energy and an update on economic and monetary union. Our objective will be to secure EU support for a G8 commitment to a new global standard for tax and the multilateral automatic exchange of information on tax. We will also aim to secure agreement for a stable energy policy framework that provides growth, competitiveness and investment. The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have both been clear that the EU needs reform. The UK will continue to argue for reforms to ensure that the EU can better tackle the challenges it faces.

[Lord Dykes]

I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Bearing in mind the very sad humiliation and setback that the Prime Minister, absent in the USA, suffered yesterday, with a much larger vote than expected, would not the obvious solution, because of agreement by those two, therefore be to assign any negotiations to the Deputy Prime Minister and other Liberal Democrat Ministers in the Cabinet who have excellent relations with other EU member states and who would help to exorcise the Tory demons of xenophobia?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this is a coalition Government, and we work as a coalition Government. There is substantial ground in the Government on a multilateral EU reform agenda. I spent three days in Brussels last week and was encouraged to find how much support there was for the sort of reform agenda we are talking about within other Governments and with a number of senior people in the EU institutions themselves.