EU Council

Peter Tapsell Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, then we had a lecture on how to negotiate. I have to say that I am not going to take any lessons from people who gave in time after time to the comfy consensus rather than ever stand up for Britain. Just look at the record: the previous Government joined a bail-out scheme even though it was not protecting a currency that they were a member of; they gave up the rebate even though they got nothing in terms of the reform of agriculture; and they signed up to the Lisbon treaty but never had the courage to put it to the British people. Every time, they just go along with what others want.

The Leader of the Opposition also talked about growth and jobs. Let me just say this: his plan, alone in Europe, is to spend more, borrow more and increase debt by more. All the while, if he wants to join the euro, he needs to understand that the treaty that is being established would actually make that illegal. The very thing he wants to do in Britain he wants to ban in Brussels.

But the key question the right hon. Gentleman cannot answer is this: does he back this treaty or not? If the answer is yes, he should have the courage to say so. If the answer is no, he should have the honesty to say that I was right to keep Britain out of it. And let me just say this: just because the right hon. Gentleman is in opposition does not mean that he should oppose Britain’s interests.

[Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

May I declare my admiration and full-hearted support for my right hon. Friend at this definitive moment in his first premiership, and query whether this Brussels summit achieved anything of strategic value to protect the threatened European banking system? Without the long-delayed and still unpromised massive support of the European Central Bank and the Bundesbank, the euro is doomed—[Hon. Members: “Doomed!”] Yes, doomed—and as Chancellor Merkel has said, the European Union is doomed with it.

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly agree with my right hon. Friend on the balance of effort that has been given, on the one hand, to new treaty powers and changes, and, on the other, to actually looking at what needs to be done, particularly in the short term, in terms of the firewall, bank recapitalisation and action by the ECB. More needs to be focused on those things rather than on the medium-term power changes in the EU, which I do not think are being hovered over by the markets, which are working out whether countries can pay their debts. In that regard, my right hon. Friend is right.