Osborne firm over Britain's EU rebate

He put down a clear marker ahead of an EU budget review which will include talks on whether the deal won by Margaret Thatcher in 1984 should be scrapped once and for all.

Mr Osborne issued his warning a day after a European Commissioner said the rebate deal was no longer justified.

The Chancellor, speaking in Brussels, insisted the rebate remained fully justified and said other European governments had better get used to the fact that it would not be surrendered in the euro-budget overhaul.

Mr Osborne, emerging from a meeting which approved sweeping new European-wide banking supervision rules, was asked how he would fend off attempts to ditch the rebate.

He replied: “By making it very clear from the start (of the budget review process) that we are not going to give way on this at all.”