European Council

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I do not recognise that picture at all. I want to set out our approach in a letter to the European Council, and Council President Donald Tusk is particularly keen to receive that letter because the Council wants to know that we are looking for change in the four areas we have raised and that that is the breadth of the negotiation. I think the right hon. Gentlemen, like some others, has been reading too many newspapers and reports that want to hype all this up into a great row with people being angry or dissatisfied. If there was a meeting like that, it was not the one I attended.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

As the Secretary of State for Defence said yesterday, we are all Eurosceptics now, so does my right hon. Friend agree that the EU institutions ought not to campaign on either side or assist either campaign in the referendum, whether financially or otherwise? Will he accept the amendments in the House of Lords to that effect?

[The Prime Minister]

The European Commission has said that it will not campaign in the referendum and those of us who want Britain to stay in a reformed European Union probably breathed a sigh of relief when we had that news. There will clearly be an in campaign and an out campaign, and there will be plenty of material on which everyone can make up their mind.