Excessive Deficits

Part of Orders of the Day — European Communities (Amendment) Bill – in the House of Commons at 4:45 am on 24 March 1993.

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Photo of Stephen Dorrell Stephen Dorrell The Financial Secretary to the Treasury 4:45, 24 March 1993

With respect to my hon. Friend, that is a rather different point. He was quoting the phrase that our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has used about his desire to pursue a policy based on the proposition that we should be at the heart of Europe. That is a rhetorical flourish not found anywhere in the treaty.

5.15 am

As regards the question of the irreversible character of the Community's movement to the third stage of economic and monetary union by signing the new treaty provisions on economic and monetary union, the treaty provisions in this document set out a total package, and part of the package is the following protocol on the position of the United Kingdom. The protocol makes it abundantly clear, in words that do not, frankly, require a professional lawyer to interpret them, that the United Kingdom has preserved for itself a freedom to join or not to join a single currency, that decision to be made by the United Kingdom in accordance with arrangements that we make for ourselves and which are set out in the Bill which the Committee is considering.