A call on Conservative colleagues to stop “scaremongering” over demands that may be made on the UK to bail-out of European countries in major debt difficulties came from Marlborough MP Claire Perry in the Commons on Tuesday.
In a debate concerning Britain’s €7.5 billion commitment to a putative €60 billion fund, she pointed out that all the countries had to “go belly up” in default before any funding was due.
“It is not a gift or a grant but a contingent liability of €7.5 billion, of which approximately €1.2 billion has been put into the facility to date,” she told MPs.
“The suggestions we often hear from members of the Government benches that hard-pressed taxpayers will see further cuts to public services or will not see the schools, hospitals or road repairs that they have been promised are simply fiction. That is not the case.”
Mrs Perry, formerly a banker who worked in the office of Chancellor George Osborne, added: “I urge members on both sides of the House to stop this Eurosceptic scaremongering, to focus on the facts of the debate.”
“And to ensure that we collectively never again sign our country up to the sort of bail-out mechanisms and removal of vetoes with which the previous government left us.”