Multiannual Financial Framework

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Tony Baldry

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

All Government Members will recognise how deeply shabby Opposition Front Benchers’ behaviour has been. I was a Member of the House when Blair negotiated away a large part of the rebate on the understanding that the common agricultural policy would be reformed. A large part of the rebate disappeared, but the CAP was not reformed, and Labour Members now have the audacity to complain that the CAP needs reform. It is a deeply shabby performance this afternoon by the Labour party and the official Opposition.

I want to address my comments in the short time I have to my hon. Friends. On the specific motion, hon. Members will agree that, if the Prime Minister manages to negotiate a real-terms freeze in the EU budget, it will be the toughest financial negotiated settlement the EU has seen. If he achieves that, he will have achieved something that no one has achieved before. That is a matter of fact.

As the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), who used to chair the Foreign Affairs Committee, said, we are talking about part of an overall picture of negotiations that the Prime Minister will have to undertake over the next few years when renegotiating our position on Europe. As many countries become closer in the eurozone, where will that put us? We must renegotiate.

Colleagues on the Government side of the House have a choice: we either support the Prime Minister or we do not. If colleagues are not prepared to support him, every time they go into a different Lobby from him, they weaken his negotiating hand in Europe. Please let us not accept the blandishments from some that the Prime Minister has a negotiating strategy that he is not willing to show us. I can assure the House that the Prime Minister is perfectly capable at the Dispatch Box of telling the House what he wants to do, what he wants to achieve and where he wants to be supported.

I was a Minister throughout every day of John Major’s Government, and I know just how much that Government were weakened by colleagues persistently going into the Division Lobby voting against the 1992-97 Conservative Government.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend and the Front-Bench team have articulated the challenge of achieving even a settlement that allows for no increase other than one in line with inflation, and part of that challenge involves building a coalition. It would be completely counter-productive, having got the agreement of Germany, France and the Netherlands, to go back to those countries and say, “Actually, our Parliament’s changed its mind. We want a bit more”, and force their hand even further.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. It is time we started to be grown up. I am sorry if I sound like an old stager but, having lived through the Major years, I must say to my Conservative colleagues that we simply cannot carry on with the sort of self-indulgence that we see on the Order Paper today. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”] No, no. We cannot continue with this self-indulgence.

The reason Blair was able to give away the rebate was largely because we lost the general election in 1997, and one reason we lost the general election was because the nation was not prepared to vote for a party and a Government that they saw as being deeply divided. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) might think that amusing, but I do not think that the country thought it amusing that the Labour party was in a position to give away a large part of this nation’s rebate.

The Conservative party has a responsibility to do the best it can for the country, and I have every confidence that the Prime Minister is seeking to do that. He has to renegotiate the whole of the UK’s position within the EU. That will take considerable tact and diplomacy, and he is entitled to consider that he has the support of Conservative Members when he does so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Tony Baldry

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. As well as being the final resting place of the great bard, William Shakespeare, Holy Trinity church in Stratford-on-Avon has 12 yew trees representing the 12 tribes of Israel and is home to a yew tree that is estimated to be several hundred years old. Does my hon. Friend agree that the protection of such trees is extremely important in maintaining the historic settings of our great churches?

[Tony Baldry]

It is fantastic that Holy Trinity, Stratford, has planted 12 new yew trees, but my hon. Friend highlights the fact that a number of older yew trees, designated as ancient or veteran, have not had adequate statutory protection. The Church of England is determined to do all that it can to ensure that every yew tree in our churchyards is properly protected.