{Oops! New #1 Issue: Lala couldnt stay, has a previous appointment with the labour partys Bereavement Officer} Treasury ministers will be hauled before MPs next week to explain why David Cameron was not informed of an impending £1.7bn charge from the European Union. The call for the extra cash, which followed a review of member states economic performance since 1995, was yesterday described by David Cameron as completely unacceptable. Chancellor George Osborne said he had learnt about the demand earlier this week, but it appeared to catch the Prime Minister off guard. European Scrutiny Committee chair Bill Cash this morning confirmed that Treasury ministers would be questioned on the apparent lack of warning from the Chancellor, an omission the Prime Minister yesterday attempted to downplay as a bit of a red herring. Mr Cash told the Today programme: I’m calling in Treasury ministers next week to my committee so that we can go through how this happened in addition to what they have to say about the way in which they intend to handle it from now on. So we’ll have a proper examination which will obviously include looking at the system itself which I’ve already described as crazy. Meanwhile, a prominent MEP told the same programme Europe expects Britain to pay the surcharge by the December 1 deadline. It appears the Prime Minister was surprised by this in Brussels, said Alexander Graf Lamsdorff, Vice president of the European Parliament. And that I can understand, because a bill of €2bn, £1.7bn, is significant enough to be informed about before you go to a summit and then are confronted with it in a surprising way. But that is an entirely British affair. The rest of Europe expects you to pay and that’s that. It came as the Telegraph reported that Angela Merkel had told Mr Cameron he should have anticipated the European Unions demand. According to a diplomatic record of talks between European leaders seen by the paper, the German Chancellor told the Prime Minister the call did not come out of the blue. I understand that it is difficult to come up with €2 billion [£1.7billion] David, but this should have been expected,” Ms Merkel reportedly said. The paper also reports that European Commission chief Jean Claude Juncker told Mr Cameron to show some political courage over the payment call, which the Prime Minister yesterday attacked as “completely unacceptable”.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 09:44:14 +0000
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