European Union (Approval of Treaty Amendment Decision) Bill [Lords]

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Without wishing to astonish my right hon. Friend the Minister, it will be my pleasure to support the Government on this European matter, for all the reasons that he has set out. I am very grateful to find myself in the company of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg).

However, I want to place on the record my profound misgivings about the huge centralisation of economic power, almost entirely beyond economic control or legal challenge, that is going to take place in Europe. The European Union has not abolished economic nationalism; it has simply raised it to the continental scale, just in time to be in danger of a currency collapse. Our friends in Europe are potentially entering into a dreadful error from which it may be that democrats and liberals should recoil in horror. I wish that they were not doing so, and I look forward to the judgment of the German constitutional court.

I commend to my right hon. Friend the initiative for a free and prospering Europe that is being proposed by my friends in eastern Europe, which asks for a radical decentralisation of economic power. Europe is going in entirely the wrong direction with the ESM. I wish it were not, and I am very glad that the Government are liberating us from any liability in relation to this monstrous mess.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Baker]

People in the markets have a much shorter-term view than is generally suspected. They will always be grateful to know that there is a willing buyer with unlimited funds for whatever they are holding.

[Emma Reynolds]

I agree that they will be happy about that. That is why it is important that what the ECB president set out last week is carried through and supported by the eurozone Governments. It must not be seen as an announcement that will come and go. I believe that Mario Draghi and the ECB have set out important steps that have been needed for some time to provide a back-stop for the single currency.