The Prime Minister made a statement, yesterday, at the House of Commons, on last week’s European Council. Bill Cash made the following intervention.
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron): With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on Afghanistan, and also report back on last week’s European Council.
(…) Let me turn to last week’s European Council. This was rightly focused on sorting out Europe’s economy by doing what we are doing in Britain: getting a grip on spending and supporting private enterprise to create jobs and growth.
On spending, the Council finalised, with the European Parliament, the seven-year budget deal we successfully negotiated in February. This agreed new flexibilities between different years and between different budget headings. Crucially, the deal delivers, for the first time, a real-terms cut in the credit card limit for EU spending for the next seven years. There was no change to the February deal, which set total payments at €908.4 billion across the next seven years. That compares with €943 billion in the past seven years. However, in this process there was a further attempt to unpick the British rebate. In February, after repeated attempts to water down the rebate, we reached a clear deal that it would remain unchanged. This was reflected in the Council conclusions that I reported back to this House. The discussion that took place was not necessary and frustrating, and it was frankly unacceptable that we had to go through it all over again. The proposal to remove our rebate on agricultural spending in new member states would have cost the British taxpayer more than £1.5 billion. That has now been categorically rejected. We will continue to get the rebate in the years ahead on the same basis that we do now. It is fair, it is right, and, unlike the previous Government, this Government will not agree to weaken it or give any part of it away.
At the Council there was a particular focus on tackling youth unemployment by supporting the private sector to create jobs and tackling burdens that hold back our businesses competing in the global race. [Interruption.] What we did—to answer the shadow Chancellor—was agree that the European Investment Bank would increase its lending by 40%, with more finance for small and medium-sized businesses. We agreed to do more to help young people not working to acquire the skills that the private sector needs through proper educational training—very much along the lines of Britain’s £1 billion Youth Contract. We also agreed to scrap unnecessary EU regulation, which ties up our businesses in red tape when they should be growing and creating new jobs. To give additional detail and urgency to the Commission’s work, in the UK we will establish a new business task force with six of our best business leaders to take a fresh and ambitious look at the impact of EU regulation on our companies.
It is vital that we expand our trade and increase overseas investment into the UK. That is one of the reasons I was the first serving British Prime Minister to visit Kazakhstan on Sunday and Monday. Since 2000, that country has seen growth at an annual rate of between 8% and 9%. Per capita income has doubled and Kazakhstan has the potential to be the sixth largest oil and gas producer in the world. My business delegation signed deals worth over £700 million, all of which will help to create and sustain jobs right here in the United Kingdom.
Finally, the Council welcomed Croatia, which became the newest member of the European Union at the weekend. We also agreed to start negotiations on accession with Serbia, and on a stability and association agreement with Kosovo. When we remember what happened in the Balkans within our political lifetimes, it is a remarkable achievement that these countries are now joining or preparing to join the EU, with a sense of peace and stability. Britain is proud to support them.
Each of these steps at the Council was about doing what is right for Britain and right for Europe. It is in our national interest to get spending under control, to make Europe more competitive and to expand EU membership to the Balkan states. Openness, competitiveness and flexibility are vital elements of the fresh settlement that I believe is needed for the European Union. We want more of a say for national parliaments and powers to flow back to member states, not just away from them. This is a new settlement that I intend to put to the country in a referendum within the first half of the next Parliament—a referendum that will give the British people the in/out choice they want and which my party will offer at the next general election. It is a referendum that my party will be voting for in this House on Friday, and I commend this statement to the House.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con): On the proposed EU-US trade deal, will my right hon. Friend tell us what are the contents and the areas covered by the negotiating mandate which was agreed behind closed doors last weekend? It is governed by a qualified majority vote of which the UK has only 12%, and it is an exclusive competence controlled by the European Commission. Can my right hon. Friend explain why the European Scrutiny Committee, which is looking into these matters, has not been supplied with the mandate, and can he tell us when we will receive it?
The Prime Minister: I can tell my hon. Friend that the discussions are going ahead on the basis of the maximum level of inclusion of all topics. I think it has been announced in the House that there is a reserve on audio-visual matters, as there has been with all the EU mandates for trade talks, but in this case, uniquely, there is the opportunity to opt back in to discussing those matters as well.
As for my hon. Friend’s point about the European Scrutiny Committee, I shall have to look into that and see whether there is anything I can do to help.
