European Council

William Cash Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously, if we cannot agree a budget, the situation would be very serious. That point was made at the Council repeatedly because, although of course there are emergency arrangements for just continuing with the existing ceilings and rolling them forward, it would be impossible for countries to plan their cohesion spending, their structural fund spending, what roads to build and what networks to put in place. That would be a very unsatisfactory outcome. I hope that the Parliament will look seriously at that, recognise that having no deal would be very bad for all countries that want to see proper planning and proper budgeting, and recognise that this is a good deal and it should accept it.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on this significant success? He carried it through in line with the most important of his five Bloomberg principles, namely that the root of our democracy and accountability lies in this Parliament, which recently voted for such a reduction. Does that not prove that the UK national interest is best served when the Government and Parliament are at one?

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. A number of leaders of different European countries kept referring to what they thought the European Parliament would do if we agreed this figure or that figure, so the point had to be made fairly frequently in the Council that we should also, and more importantly, be listening to the individual national Parliaments, because of course it is our Parliaments that have to vote the money. The European Parliament does not have any responsibility for voting the money, and it is to our Parliaments that we should account.