Be realistic over EU, Tories are told

Mr Hague said the 95 Tory MPs for Westminster to have the final say on EU rules had to be “realistic”.

The Conservatives have been more united in recent months over Europe following David Cameron’s support for a Bill put forward by backbench MP James Wharton that would guarantee a referendum on EU membership by 2017.

But a letter signed by 95 Conservative MPs has called for the Prime Minister to go much further and give the Commons the authority to block new EU legislation and repeal measures that threaten Britain’s “national interest”.

“Each time you have stood up for British interests in Brussels, you have achieved a great deal,” it said.

“Building on your achievements, we would urge you to back the European Scrutiny Committee proposal and make the idea of a national veto over current and future EU laws a reality.”

Mr Hague, the MP for Richmond, said his EU counterparts were in no doubt that the UK was seeking “more power for national parliaments, more accountability of the EU to national parliaments”.

He said Britain had already proposed a ‘red card’ system which would allow groups of national parliaments to block unwanted measures from Brussels.

“On the specific (parliamentary veto) proposal ... when you think about it of course if national parliaments all around the EU were regularly and unilaterally able to choose which bits of EU law they would apply and which bits they would not then the European single market would not work and even a Swiss-style free trade arrangement with the EU would not work,” Mr Hague said.

“So we have to be realistic about these things.”

The Liberal Democrats have already pinpointed Europe as one of the main issues they can use as they establish dividing lines with their coalition partners ahead of European and local elections in May and next year’s General Election.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, said: “We now have two parties – the UK Independence Party and the Conservative Party – locked in this sort of deathly embrace, this fight to the finish, and my concern is that actually what ends up happening is that they argue with themselves and they ratchet up the rhetoric in ever more breathless terms against the European Union and our place in it.”

“Of course what ends up happening is that you get a race to the bottom. You get a drift towards the exit and that then jeopardises millions of jobs in this country.”

Mr Clegg also criticised fresh proposals from Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith aimed at cutting the Government’s welfare bill.

Mr Duncan Smith said he would like EU immigrants to have to wait for up to two years to claim benefits – rather than the three month period that was introduced on January 1.

He hailed the idea of limiting child benefit to the first two children as “brilliant”, and said rethinking housing benefit for under-25s could encourage people to take jobs.

Mr Clegg said: “I am not in favour of penalising the young. I am not in favour of a sort of Chinese-style family policy saying that the state says it is okay to have two children, it is not okay to have three children.”

The Sheffield Hallam MP said it was “eminently sensible” to ask immigrants to “jump through certain hoops” before claiming welfare benefits.