European Council

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will be saying a bit more about that later this year. As I have said, I think that opportunities are opening up. As Europe changes—and the changes are coming because of the single currency and what it is doing to the European Union—options are opening up to form a different, better relationship that the British people would back. We will then have to work out exactly how to get the consent for that relationship that the British people deserve.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Following the Prime Minister’s earlier answer, he will know that the draft research and innovation budget in Horizon 2020 includes a number of elements that were not part of FP7 and therefore the growth is misleading. Will he reassure the House that he will fight unambiguously to protect the research and innovation budget?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The figures I read out are the correct ones—€83.5 billion in the last period and a proposal for more than €108 billion in the last negotiating box. I can reassure him that the like-minded group of countries that came together to argue for further tens of billions of cuts in this proposal were looking for only a very small reduction in that heading in the European budget. We can get down to the sort of figures we need without fundamentally changing that budget heading.