European Council

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Martin, asks a good question. It is not that I am trying to duck out of it, but my noble friend Lord Astor of Hever will be repeating a Statement at a convenient moment after 4.30 pm, and I am sure that he will be able to give the noble Lord an answer.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I put two brief questions to the noble Lord the Leader of the House. We now know that from now on the EU budget must reflect what we are doing in our own countries. Let us suppose that the debt and deficit position in this country and others in Europe is put back on a sustainable path. Would that mean that a Conservative or a Conservative/Liberal Democrat Government would continue to oppose any increase in the budget, although the situation had changed?

My second question concerns the bailout. We are told that it is,

“absolutely in our national interest that Britain is not drawn into having to help with any future bailout”.

You do not have to be outside the eurozone to share that ambition, but is it not inconsistent with the preceding sentence, which is:

“It is in our national interest that Europe avoids being paralysed by another debt crisis as it was with Greece in May”?

God forbid that the United Kingdom should ever find itself in the same position as Greece, but if it did would it mean that the Government would be ideologically and firmly opposed to anybody helping us out?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, on the second question, if a tragedy occurred and we needed to be bailed out—as we have been in the past, sometimes—there is no reason why we should not go to the IMF. That is what the IMF is for. I think the point behind the noble Lord’s first question was that if we were in a different position and budgetary environment, would we be ideologically opposed ever to seeing an increase in the budget? Some of us would be very opposed to seeing an increase in the EU budget when there are still so many uncertainties and inefficiencies built into the process of budget-making, grant-making and handing out money. We would like to see a comprehensive review of how this money is spent so that there is firm control by member states and the Commission over how it is all done.