ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Now then, William Hague has defended Britain’s decision not to sign up to a new EU Treaty saying it risked a considerable loss of national sovereignty. The formation of a new Euro Plus Group, as it’s being called, means the UK is now outside negotiations in Brussels. The Foreign Secretary joins me live, a very good morning to you Mr Hague. Can I just start with a quotation, ‘An increased risk of a two-speed Europe in which Britain’s position becomes more marginalised’, from one of your Cabinet colleagues. Is that wrong?

WILLIAM HAGUE:
We’re not marginalised, I don’t agree. I don’t use the terminology ‘two-speed Europe’, that implies that there is one group getting on with something more quickly than another group. There are overlapping circles of decision making in Europe, some are in the euro, some aren’t, some are in the Schengen Border Controls, some aren’t. This is what some people mean by a two-speed Europe but I don’t use that terminology. We are not marginalised, I can assure you of that. Our agreement is required in the EU to a whole range of other decisions that will be coming up over the next few months, we work closely with our partners on foreign policy, on the single market and so on and that all continues. We have had this situation over the last few days and our veto of the Treaty in the early hours of Friday morning, but all of that other work goes on and it’s very important to remember that.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Well that quotation is from Mr Clegg as you will recognise, so not marginalised, not two-speed, it seems then in terms of partners, your coalition partners, you have got a bit of a coalition split brewing here.

WILLIAM HAGUE:
Well everybody knows and everybody in the coalition knows that the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats approach to Europe and approached the last general election in a different way. Certainly there are differences between parties in a coalition on a subject like this but as we always have over the last eighteen months, we work through those things to a common position, for the government to have a common position. We did that in these negotiations, the negotiated position that David Cameron took on Thursday night and Friday morning was agreed in advance with the Liberal Democrats in the coalition and we will go on doing that because although some of those different views about Europe have come to the fore in the last couple of days, the Liberal Democrats are very clear, as we are, that the coalition continues and that’s in the vital interests of this country.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
But Mr Clegg has just been speaking as you know, you talk about consulting him but he said the first he knew about the conclusion was being rung at his home in Sheffield early on Friday morning and told about it and has just said of course things would have been different if he had been at the summit.

WILLIAM HAGUE:
Well when you say that’s the first time he knew about it, that’s when it happened, that’s the first time anybody knew about it so of course that’s when he was informed, as I was, and I was in Brussels at the time. That was when these things came to a head but of course as a government we were agreed on the negotiating position in advance and that this was our minimum requirement for agreeing to a Treaty, to take part in a new European Treaty. That minimum requirement was not met and so of course the Prime Minister did the right thing in not agreeing to it, that was the basis on which we had agreed to proceed.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Okay, so how far does this go because the Liberal Democrats, I’ve just been talking to Paddy Ashdown, Lord Ashdown, about it and they say look, it’s got to stop here in terms of the deteriorating relationship with Europe as they see it, there has to be absolutely a line in the sand here, that there is no renegotiation of the relationship with Europe and certainly not a referendum. Are you going to actually that out loud?

WILLIAM HAGUE:
Well we have already made clear, the Prime Minister made clear last week, that unless the British government agreed to a Treaty handing over new powers to the rest of the European Union, we don’t have a referendum. We passed a law this year through parliament, that if any government does propose such a Treaty there has to be a referendum but since we are not proposing, and clearly we’ve not agreed to hand over any new powers to the EU, that doesn’t bring forward a referendum. I do want to emphasise that across the board on a vast range of issues, in my own area on policy towards Iran and Syria and the Middle East peace process, vital issues of our times, we remain fully engaged and discussing every day with our European partners how we approach these things, that we are usually the leaders informing opinions in Europe about these things and that will continue as well …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Leaders informing opinions, just on that point Foreign Secretary, I find that hard to believe at the moment, certainly with the French. Can Mr Cameron pick up the phone to Mr Sarkozy and you’d say that the entente is still cordiale?

WILLIAM HAGUE:
Yes, absolutely I can. This year the foreign policies of Britain and France have been more closely aligned together, working together, than in any year since the Second World War, you have seen that through the Libya crisis, it was true two weeks ago in their great solidarity with us when our embassy was overrun in Iran and so that continues and we will be having a UK/France summit in the coming weeks. This all continues and the relationship between those two leaders is very good, I was in the meeting with them on Thursday night, before these negotiations and of course they have a frank but good, warm relationship and all of that will continue. So it is important to get these events into that perspective and also into this perspective if I may say so, that the Treaty that the 26 other countries now wish to take forward will take many, many months to ratify through their parliaments, there may have to be a referendum in one or two countries. In the meantime there is the huge economic task of stabilising and making healthy the eurozone, getting our economies growing – these are the things that actually we need to concentrate on while that Treaty ratification is going forward.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
You talk about the 26 going forward without Britain and there is this huge issue of the European institutions, things like the European Court of Justice and the European Commission, which you’re saying they will not be able to get to operate in terms of the Treaty that they put together. Well, the French amongst others see that differently, Mr Sarkozy says there will be no problem using bodies such as that.

WILLIAM HAGUE:
Well it is certainly true that how this will work remains to be decided in detail. What we are clear about is this, that the institutions of the European Union belong to the 27 member states, that not a single word of the Treaties of the European Union is being changed as a result of the discussions in Brussels, the Treaties of the European Union remain the same and no Treaty signed outside of those Treaties can undercut or override the Treaties of the European Union. So we start from that position, it’s those Treaties that remain paramount of course in the affairs of the European Union so any new treaty signed by less than 27 will somehow have to be consistent with that. That’s now for them to draw up so these discussions will take place over the coming months.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
But this is the conundrum isn’t it, because Britain as I understand it, will not be at the next Eurozone summit taking place in March, how do you get those points across?

WILLIAM HAGUE:
Well we’ll get those points across very effectively because what I just said, the institutions of the European Union belong to all the 27 member states. You are asking me and other people have been talking in the media about is Britain isolated and so on, let me remind people that we had all this argument when we said we weren’t going to join the euro, when I was campaigning against joining the euro more than ten years ago. People said you will be isolating Britain, you will be left out of decisions and so on. Do they think, does anybody think now that we would have been right to join the euro because of a fear of standing up for our own interests and understanding the needs of our own country? No, very, very few people would think that and so it is not the case that in European affairs we always have to agree with everything, even if it is not in the interests of the United Kingdom. We have taken the right approach to that as a government, it’s right for the long term interests of this country, it is probably right for Europe as well that we speak frankly and say what we need and what our views are of the future.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Foreign Secretary, can you just clear up this issue, I mean the only hard and fast cash that they seemed to come up with last week was through the IMF, €200 billion, 150 billion put up by members of the eurozone, the other 50 billion – Britain of course is a major contributor to the IMF, presumably through that route we may end up supporting the likes of Italy, Greece and Spain?

WILLIAM HAGUE:
Well, of course we support IMF programmes around the world, that is absolutely right. There are three of those in the European Union, again to get this in perspective I think there are more than 50 countries in the world that have programmes agreed with the IMF or are entitled to IMF assistance in one way or another and there are three of those in the European Union, so when we increase the resources of the IMF, which was actually agreed under the last Labour government, agreed to such an increases in resources and we …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
But on this 200 billion, Foreign Secretary, on this 200 billion, is Britain putting money into that which Christine Legard, the Head of the IMF has said could become, if the IMF intervenes, a cap without limitation?

WILLIAM HAGUE:
There’s always a limitation on the resources of the IMF, we voted in parliament a couple of months ago to increase the British subscription to the IMF so we have already done that, we have already committed ourselves to an increased British contribution to the IMF but I stress that that is to help stability in the whole of the world economy, including in the eurozone and of course some of that money therefore goes into some of those eurozone countries.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
So there you’ve said it, it will help eurozone countries, so there we are, putting money into the rescue plan without being able to talk to eurozone members about it because we are locked out of that room.

WILLIAM HAGUE:
No, that’s quite wrong. Here you are asking me about the IMF resources, Britain is of course a leading member of the IMF, a leading subscriber to the IMF, so we play a full part in the decisions about how IMF resources are used. We don’t take part, and thanks to this government we don’t take part, in bail outs in the eurozone, we extricated ourselves from the pressure to join the bail out of Greece and we have secured agreement in the last round of European negotiations that we will be removed completely from the liability to take part in eurozone only bail outs. The British taxpayer is protected from that by David Cameron, by his negotiation in the last round of such negotiations, other than Ireland to whom we have made a special bilateral loan because of course the Irish economy is so closely intertwined with ours.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Foreign Secretary, thank you very much indeed, William Hague there.