ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS 

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well yesterday was a big day in Europe.  You might not have noticed, chances are you won’t have noticed at all but a new European Commission started work and that means a whole new team of people in charge making big decisions that affect all of us.  Well what does this mean for Britain’s relationship with Europe and what challenges lie ahead for the European Union?  In a moment I’ll speak to the new Vice President of the European Commission itself but first of all I am joined by Roger Liddle who was an advisor to the last President of the Commission and was Tony Blair’s advisor on Europe, he is also a Labour peer.  A very good morning to you Roger Liddle, just tell us first of all because as I say, a lot of people won’t have noticed any changes going on, why does it matter to the UK?  What’s going on here?

LORD LIDDLE: Well I think it’s sad to say when people think of the Commission they think of a sort of useless body of interfering bureaucrats.  It isn’t useless because if we want to change the way that Europe works, it is the Commission that has the right of initiative to change things.  Interfering, yes, it does get things wrong sometimes and it may have got one of the things wrong recently but it interferes generally to enforce the rules and that’s in our interests because we’ve got a very strong interest in the single market.  

DM: But that’s the UK’s point, are there too many rules, too much red tape?

LORD LIDDLE: Well we are very, very strong proponents of the single market, the single market is to a large extent a British creation and to make it work it requires a lot of rules and it is the Commission that enforces those rules and that’s why the European Commission, on the whole the British should be positive about the European Commission.

DM: Staying with the broad points, we can deal with that in a moment but you mentioned there that it is seen as this huge bureaucracy and seen as, one of the words you left out there, as undemocratic, unsupervised bureaucracy, there is no control on it particularly for the United Kingdom.  

LORD LIDDLE: That is unfair.  That is unfair because first of all it is run by a college of Commissioners who are all politicians appointed from the member states and secondly it takes decisions enforcing the rules but when new rules are put in place they have to be agreed by the Council of Ministers and if I can just quote you one example which is very important, the fuss last week about the British budget contribution, that is a set of rules which British ministers voted for and they could have vetoed because the decision was unanimous as to how the budget should be calculated so we are …

DM: So you think Britain should cough up?

LORD LIDDLE: No, no, no, no, I’m not saying that the Commission didn’t handle it somewhat insensitively, I’m not saying that, all I’m saying is that the Commission operates within a framework of rules which are set by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament and you always have to remember that when you are criticising their actions.  

DM: Okay, you mentioned there also the issue of the single market and one of the biggest centrepieces I suppose, the biggest tenets of the single market is the free movement of peoples within the European Europe and that of course …

LORD LIDDLE: It is the founding principle of the Treaty of Rome of 1956.

DM: So that’s not going to change whatever Mr Cameron says?  

LORD LIDDLE: Well I think there may be changes in the way that it operates but no, not in the fundamentals, there is absolutely no prospect that Britain could stay in the European Union and yet at the same time have the right to control the number of people from the European Union coming here.  Because for one thing where does that put the position of over two million Britons who live on the continent?

DM: That’s a very good point.  

LORD LIDDLE: The people who say, oh we’ve got to have these controls, what are they doing to affect the lives of those people?

DM: Now I’m going to put this to my next guest in a moment or two but what is the mood, given your contacts with the outgoing Commissioners, what is the sense about the UK and our demands?  To us in this country it seems like this is the central issue within the European Union, the central issue for the Commission, presumably it’s right down their list if it’s there at all?

LORD LIDDLE: No, I think it is an important issue for the Commission because I think that Europe would be a lot weaker without Britain as a member and I think that the Commission under Juncker will be trying its best to help David Cameron within the framework of rules that it has to operate.  Now I think the key priorities for the Commission are to revive growth in the eurozone, have a new grand bargain to revive growth in the eurozone, to get on with the liberalisation of the single market in areas like digital, energy policy, services where they haven’t so far and to help mobilise Europe to deal with the threats that it faces, nationalism in Russia, chaos in North Africa, fanaticism in the Middle East.  If we can’t get our act together to deal with these problems then there is going to be serious problems for Europeans.  

DM: Plenty to be going on with then.  

LORD LIDDLE: And therefore I think that Britain has a lot to gain from a Commission that is doing its job properly.  

DM: Okay Roger Liddle, very good to see, thank you very much indeed.