European Council

Pat McFadden Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I take my hon. Friend’s description of me as a compliment, though I recall that Dr Johnson described a lexicographer as “a harmless drudge”—if I remember the quote from his dictionary accurately.

The answer to my hon. Friend’s question is that we must again go back to the distinction between a policy that is directed by and owned by the EU collectively and its institutions, which we do not have, and a broad policy on security and defence that rests on free co-operation between willing national Governments working together so that their capabilities complement one another, and working in partnership particularly with NATO but with other partners around the world as well. There is nothing to fear from the latter version of the common security and defence policy, and that is the version embodied in the European Council conclusions.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

In advance of the summit, the Prime Minister made great play of new rules regarding access to benefits for EU migrant workers. What proportion of claimants for working-age benefits are made up of EU migrant workers?

[Mr Lidington]

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has said in this House before, one of the difficulties we have had is that the previous Government chose not to collect statistics for social security benefits categorised by nationality of claimants. He and his team at the DWP are now changing that, and I am sure that they will produce those figures in due course, but they do not exist for the period of years that the right hon. Gentleman wants, because his Government did not bother to collect them.