European Council

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The Government continue to raise all these cases and issues around them with the Russian authorities. Our embassy in Moscow is closely watching developments in the cases of Mr Khordorkovsky and Mr Lebedev, and we remain very concerned about Mr Magnitsky’s case, as raised by the hon. Gentleman. We await with interest the conclusion of the official investigation into the case, which was announced by President Medvedev in November 2009.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I congratulate the Prime Minister on a robust performance in Brussels. Resisting the Parliament’s demand for an extravagant budget was absolutely the right thing to do. As he looks ahead towards the justified freeze on the budget post-2014—and not just because of the weather—can he assure us that it does not mean that the budget will be frozen, but that subsidies that are not justified and expenditure that is wasted will be replaced by, for example, expenditure on energy and climate change issues, which are both the priority of this Government and ought to be the priority of the European Union as well?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, which goes to the point made by the former Europe Minister, the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), which is that we must do better at trying to re-order the priorities of the European budget, but I do not accept that we can do that only by allowing an increase. I accept that we are taking a tough position, because we are trying to get a freeze with major partners for 2014 to 2020, but we also want budget reform and reform of the CAP. We are in the vanguard of arguing for that because we want to see the money better spent. It is right to set out down this path and try to achieve those goals.