Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 7:04 pm on 23 July 2024.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
Crossbench
7:04,
23 July 2024
My Lords, I take this opportunity to thank and congratulate the Leader of the House; this is the first time I have spoken since she took up her new position. I also welcome that the Statement mentioned the advantage that the Prime Minister took at Blenheim to give his colleagues and partners at that meeting the two key points in the gracious Speech about our relations with other European countries and the European Union: the reset and the pact of security in the widest sense.
I am sure that the Leader of the House is aware that the next country to chair the European Political Community is Hungary and there is due to be a meeting there, presumably in Budapest, in the second half of this year. The Prime Minister of Hungary is a past master of pretending that he is something that he is not: the representative of the European Union. His rotating presidency gives him no right to that; that is a matter for the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission. Can the Leader of the House assure me that we are alert to attempts that may be made to peddle the aberrant views on the Ukraine conflict held by the Prime Minister of Hungary?
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