European Council

William Cash Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

One of the many contributions to public life that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) made after making that remark is that all future Front Benchers, probably on either side of the House, will carefully read every treaty and get to the end.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Given that response, will the Prime Minister confirm that the presidency conclusions, to which he has referred, do in fact endorse the EU taskforce report, which clearly states that there will be “a new legal framework” for further surveillance and powers for economic governance, which cover both the eurozone and the EU, including us, and, moreover, that any EU treaty imposes legal rights and obligations on all the member states? Why, therefore, did my right hon. Friend reckon that, together, these do not affect the UK, that

“it isn’t going to make any difference to us”

and that, on that basis, there would be, as he put it, no referendum?

[The Prime Minister]

This is a very serious point and we probably require a longer exchange than is possible from the Dispatch Box. I say to my hon. Friend, who follows this very closely, that we have to differentiate between two important things—the first is the Van Rompuy report and the second is the very limited treaty change that is being proposed by the Germans and now, in principle, endorsed by the Council—because the treaty change is really focused simply on the issue of putting a temporary bail-out mechanism on to a permanent basis.

On the Van Rompuy report, the paragraph to which my hon. Friend refers is paragraph 34, which talks about “macro-economic surveillance”—something that has happened for more than 10 years in the European Union. It is defined in paragraph 35, and paragraph 39 is very clear that the sanctions it talks about refer only to euro area members. I would also draw his attention to paragraph 4, which states that all of this is looked at

“within the existing legal framework of the European Union.”

That is important. The other paragraph that I think is vitally important is paragraph 18, which says—I quoted it earlier—that

“strengthened enforcement measures need to be implemented for all EU Member States, except the UK as a consequence of Protocol 15 of the Treaty”.

That is what gives us the protection. We read these things very carefully.