EU Council

Michael Meacher Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support but would repeat the point I made last Wednesday. Of course Britain has a key interest in being in the European Union. I do not believe that the sort of options that other countries have outside the European Union give them anything like the influence that we have, because it is not just the markets we need open; it is a say over the rules of those markets. That is what membership of the single market gives us in this country.

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

Is it not utterly bizarre that the Prime Minister has marginalised this country and recklessly thrown away Britain’s international influence, from Washington to Beijing, solely to protect the City from regulation when it is urgently in need of some regulation? In any case, his veto cannot protect the banking sector from any future EU finance directives. Is he not therefore ashamed that never before has so much been thrown away for so little or, indeed, needlessly for almost nothing?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman clearly wrote his questions before coming to the House and listening to my statement. As I set out in the statement, we were not seeking special protections for the City; we were seeking a level playing field. Indeed, in some ways, we were asking to be able to have more regulation here in the UK, not least because of the shambles of RBS. Let us be clear: the Financial Services Authority report today names only three politicians as culpable—Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister and the shadow Chancellor, who was the man partly responsible for this complete shambles that we now have to clear up.