European Council

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 21st December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, a Private Notice Question is not the same as a Statement so we do not have to go round the Front Benches in the same way as we do on a Statement. I do not know whether the noble Lord might want to give way to my noble friend Lady McIntosh.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, there were indeed wider discussions than the renegotiation reform agenda of the United Kingdom. The PNQ refers to a specific part of that. I can reassure my noble friend that wider issues such as that of Denmark and on security and terrorism will be dealt with in the Prime Minister’s Statement.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we on these Benches recognise that the Prime Minister has made very good progress and we wish him luck in finishing the negotiations in February in the national interest. We recognise that there are parallel negotiations to be conducted within the Conservative Party and we hope he will put the national interest before the party interest as well. On the most difficult issues of migration and welfare benefits, will the Government do their utmost to ensure that we are all provided with accurate evidence on the situation? It has always been very difficult to get out of the Home Office and the DWP accurate evidence of how serious the problem is, rather than the campaign promoted by the Daily Mail and others. If we are to have a mature debate on all this as we come up to the referendum, we need to know how much of a problem there is on in-work and out-of-work benefits as a pull factor.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

The noble Lord is right to say that discussions on a matter as important—a once-in-a-lifetime decision—as the position of the United Kingdom in the European Union should be made in a cool, rational and evidence-based way. With regard to in-work benefits, I simply say that taking a look at the DWP’s own figures for March 2013—the latest usable figures in this connection—shows that about 40% of all recent European Economic Area migrants are supported by the UK benefits system.