David Cameron to face MPs in Commons over EU veto

David Cameron will face MPs later to explain his decision to veto EU treaty changes, the day after his deputy PM said the move was “bad for Britain”.

Many of his own MPs in the Commons will welcome his decision, but Labour and some Lib Dem MPs are set to criticise Mr Cameron for isolating the UK.

Labour leader Ed Miliband will accuse Mr Cameron of failing in his objective of protecting the UK financial sector.

The PM is expected to say why he felt his approach was in the UK’s interest.

Downing Street sources told the BBC David Cameron would give a factual account of the decisions he took in his Commons statement at 1530 GMT.

Mr Cameron blocked changes to the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, which were aimed at addressing the euro crisis and preventing a repeat in the future, at a summit in Brussels on Friday.

He and Chancellor George Osborne have insisted the veto was in part to protect the City of London from excessive intervention by Europe, but Labour and the UK Independence Party have both argued that actually no additional safeguards were achieved.

The treaty changes needed the support of all 27 EU members, including those not in the euro, such as the UK, to go ahead.

It now looks likely that all 26 other members of the European Union will agree to a new “accord” setting out tougher budget rules aimed at preventing a repeat of the current eurozone crisis.

The new accord will hold eurozone members to strict budgetary rules including:

    a cap of 0.5% of GDP on countries’ annual structural deficits
    “automatic consequences” for countries whose public deficit exceeds 3% of GDP
    a requirement to submit their national budgets to the European Commission, which will have the power to request that they be revised

However the deal still has to be agreed by a number of national parliaments, and the reaction of the financial markets suggests it has failed to bring a swift end to the euro crisis.

The current French presidential front-runner, Socialist Francois Hollande, said on Monday that if he was elected next May he would renegotiate the accord, saying: “This accord is not the right answer.”

Former foreign secretary and Labour MP David Miliband said Mr Cameron’s “Churchillian” image of going it alone was misleading.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s a self-defeating way of standing up for Britain. It’s a defining moment for Britain and a very dangerous moment.”

Mr Miliband compared it with Anthony Eden’s decision not to join the founders of the European Union in 1958.
‘Phantom threat’

“David Cameron has engineered a situation where… Britain is without a say,” he added.

Mr Miliband said Mr Cameron had used a “phantom veto against a phantom threat” and he urged the prime minister to explain “what was the dire mortal threat that he has avoided”.

BBC political correspondent Iain Watson says Mr Cameron’s decision to veto a new EU treaty without the protection he wanted for Britain’s financial services industry will be welcomed by many Conservatives in the Commons.

But Lib Dem backbenchers feel they have been given the green light to criticise Mr Cameron following Nick Clegg’s warning about the outcome of the Brussels summit, he added.

Initially Mr Clegg, the Lib Dem leader and Deputy Prime Minister, had said the coalition was united over the use of the veto, but on Sunday he said he had “made it clear” to Mr Cameron it was “untenable” for him to welcome a move that he saw as “bad for Britain”.

Mr Clegg blamed French and German “intransigence” and pressure from Eurosceptic Conservatives for putting Mr Cameron in “a very difficult position”.

Nick Clegg says he is ‘bitterly disappointed’ by Mr Cameron’s veto

He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme: “I’m bitterly disappointed by the outcome of last week’s summit, precisely because I think now there is a danger that the UK will be isolated and marginalised within the European Union.

“I don’t think that’s good for jobs, in the City or elsewhere, I don’t think it’s good for growth or for families up and down the country.”

Foreign Secretary William Hague insisted Britain was “not marginalised”, and told Sky News that while “everybody knows” that the Tories and Lib Dems had different views on Europe, the negotiating position taken by Mr Cameron had been agreed in advance with Mr Clegg’s party.

The criticism from senior Lib Dems – the junior partners in the UK’s coalition government – continued on Monday but ex-cabinet minister David Laws insisted the coalition would survive.

The Lib Dem MP told the BBC there was disagreement over the tactical position the UK got itself into, but he insisted that the difficulties were manageable.

He sought to blame France, saying “it seems to many of us that France took a deliberate decision to ignore the quite reasonable demands of the UK, and perhaps actively seek to exclude the UK from the core of European Union countries”.

Labour leader Ed Miliband has called on Mr Cameron to use his statement to MPs to “explain why he did something that was so bad for Britain and bad for British jobs”.

“He did this because the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party has effectively taken over and that isn’t good for the national interest,” the Labour leader said.

Lib Dem peer Baroness Tonge has suggested members of her party are reaching the end of their patience with the coalition.

“This whole coalition thing – we have just been sold a pup time after time after time,” she said.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage said the City was “under very serious threat” of “retribution” over the veto, adding: “Every time the bond markets twitch, I can see the finger being pointed at those awful Anglo-Saxons in the City of London.”