Following the request of the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young) for a statement or debate about the Euro Crisis, has my right hon. Friend considered the possibility that the so-called crisis did not result in people like me shedding any tears?

There are always events, such as the Euro Crisis, and other crises, on which the stand of our Prime Minister is highly to be commended, as well as on other matters naturally not referred to in government business.

Given that the very large loan to Greece on2 May did not stop the rolling Euro Crisis despite the promises from many of the participants at the time, will the Chancellor assure the House that Britain does not stand ready to lend more money to other eurozone members in the event that the Irish loan package does not mark the end of the crisis either?

Immigration from Ireland to the UK has doubled from 7,000 to 14,000 as the Euro Crisis has developed.

Not only have the horses bolted from the stable, but it is on fire as the Crisis of the Euro continues.

It seems to me that very little work is being done on the possibility of the Euro Crisis leading to more general examples of the no bail-out clause's bluff being called.

First, eurozone members are quite rightly looking at ways to resolve some of the underlying problems of the Euro Crisis, including by strengthening economic co-ordination arrangements.

Eurozone members are quite rightly looking at ways to resolve some of the underlying problems of the Euro Crisis, including by strengthening economic co-ordination arrangements.

I would agree with that, although obviously the Euro Crisis has created a new situation in economic affairs.

How can a Crisis in the Euro possibly be classified as a natural disaster?

If the Euro Crisis gets worse and creates more financial and economic turmoil among our major industrial trading partners on the continent or if there are unforeseen problems with the rate of slow-down in the emerging market economies, which are currently applying tough monetary medicine to try to curb their inflation, it could be that much more difficult to hit those Budget targets.

However, within two years of the approval of the Lisbon treaty we have already had a proposal for a revision of that treaty, under the simplified revision procedure, to create a European stability mechanism, which is necessary to deal with the Crisis in the Euro area.

My Lords, is it not the case that this is not a Euro Crisis, as many commentators have been trying to pretend, but a Greek funding and fiscal crisis caused by excessive borrowing by the Greeks, irresponsible lending and mispricing of risk by lenders?

Another area where the Government know that there is potential for growth, and about which they should be making many more encouraging noises, is the single market, particularly in services and the digital single market-and this in spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said about the Euro Crisis.

My Lords, perhaps I may suggest to the Minister that what is really damaging confidence and what has knocked stock markets is, in fact, the Euro Crisis.

The Crisis in the Euro may now been inching towards resolution, but it has already delivered a huge knock to international confidence.

Sir John Major said four days ago that the Government should use the Euro Crisis as an opportunity to loosen EU powers over Britain.

Yes, the deepening Euro Crisis and the weaker Us recovery have made things harder for British exporters in the past three months, but one cannot blame the eurozone or the world economy for the collapse of economic recovery here in Britain when, since last autumn, our economy has grown more slowly than that of any EU country except Greece and Portugal, when we have the highest level of inflation of any EU country except Estonia and Latvia, and when, over the past year, we have seen a bigger rise in unemployment than the EU average, when most EU countries have seen unemployment not rising, but falling.

Europe is locked into the Euro Crisis - a self-generated crisis - from which we were saved by my right hon. Friendthe Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), who, thank heavens, kept us out of the euro.

I cannot tell how This Euro Crisis, which is bedevilling us all, will work out - nor can the Prime Minister for that matter - but I question whether it is in our interest to keep the euro going.

The motion is tragically timed, because it pits against each other the equally valid causes of ensuring that security and stability are maintained during a Great Euro Crisis that will affect us here in the United Kingdom - even the discussion of a referendum on leaving the European Union will contribute to that instability - and giving the people the voice that they have been denied for so long in the determination of our role in Europe.

We have had positive gross domestic product numbers this morning, but the biggest single boost to the British economy this autumn would be a lasting resolution of the Euro Crisis.

The biggest danger, however, is that the Euro Crisis will lead to a two-speed Europe that fractures the single market.

(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make a statement on the Euro Crisis and its implication for the United Kingdom.

I was here in the early '90s with another Tory Government, Another Euro Crisis and another Prime Minister battling for his life - the same players, only this time there are about 40 more Tory rebels.

Have the Government drawn a line in the sand for the amount of money they will not exceed if asked by the International Monetary Fund to contribute to a greater extent specifically to deal with the Euro Crisis?

As there is a danger of the Euro Crisis now spreading to Italy, can the Prime Minister tell me what the leaders of euroland have said they will do by way of buying Italian bonds or offering subsidised loans to Italy to head off the crisis in the market there?

Today, with a full blown Euro Crisis on our hands, a real prospect exists of a fragmentation of the eurozone.

We have also found, perhaps, an unlikely ally in Chancellor Merkel, who only yesterday said that the new Commission proposals on eurozone countries submitting their budgets for approval to Brussels to solve the Euro Crisis are "extraordinarily inappropriate".

Of course, as noble Lords will know, the flatlining of economic growth in the United Kingdom preceded the Euro Crisis by at least nine months.

We are now undertaking extensive contingency planning to deal with all potential outcomes of the Euro Crisis.

”] However, Britain's economic recovery was choked off a year ago, before the Euro Crisis.

We all know why - even as the Euro Crisis deepens and he is borrowing £158 billion more than he planned - this oh-so political Chancellor will not budge because to change course now would be to admit that he has got the key economic judgments of this Parliament absolutely, catastrophically wrong.

Far from the Government's having instilled confidence and stirred entrepreneurial spirits for the future, confidence has dropped further and faster in Britain than anywhere else in the last 18 months, and had done so well before the Euro Crisis.

The Euro Crisis, economic difficulties in the United States and the emergence of new, major competitors also remind us that our economic future is inextricably linked to that of other nations, including the very poor.

He then blamed the Euro Crisis, but the fact is that our economic recovery was choked off a year ago, well before the recent crisis.

It is not too late to change course, and the deepening Euro Crisis makes it more important for him to see sense.

The Euro Crisis certainly has had an impact and it broke in May 2010.

The best economists in the Bank of England could not even quantify or say what disaster might befall us if there were a Euro Crisis, and to me that is very concerning.

The first is rising commodity and food prices, the second is that the scale of the boom and bust under the last Government had a greater impact on the economy than previously thought, and the third is that the Euro Crisis has increased instability and uncertainty, which has affected household and business spending.

The British people want to see two things from this week's European summit: first, a resolute and uncompromising defence of Britain's national interests; and, secondly, an end to the disastrous Crisis of the Euro - a currency that the Labour party still want us to join.

Unless we solve the competitiveness problem at the heart of the Euro Crisis, the crisis will keep recurring.

May I hark back a month to7 November, when, as is recorded at column 28 of that day's Hansard, I put three suggestions to my right hon. Friend for containing the Euro Crisis, with which he appeared to agree?

The idea that we can ignore the Euro Crisis, the challenges that Europe faces and the challenge of the emerging and dynamic economies is false.

She was more concerned - and America is more concerned - about whether this will be an effective way of dealing with the Crisis of the Euro.

Secondly, finally and most gravely of all, the failure of all our political leaders across Europe to solve the Euro Crisis and in particular to get the European Central Bank to start doing its job as lender of last resort is now the biggest threat to banks in Britain, businesses in Britain and jobs in Britain.

My Lords, as my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made clear in the Autumn Statement, the Government, including of course the Treasury, are undertaking extensive contingency planning to deal with all potential outcomes of the Euro Crisis.

Will the Minister tell us whether that is the final figure; whether there will be any increase or, because of the Euro Crisis, any decrease in the amount we give Croatia; and whether that will continue after Croatia joins the EU?

I gently reminded him that the credit crunch had been sparked when a French bank, BNP Paribas, announced it could no longer put a value on its property funds, that it subsequently emerged that continental banks had far higher levels of gearing than Anglo-Saxon banks, and that the Current Euro Crisis is, at its heart, a banking crisis, as continental banks are so under-capitalised that they cannot absorb the losses on their holdings of sovereign debt and their Governments cannot afford to recapitalise them openly and immediately, as British and American Governments did.

Plainly, given the importance of the UK's trade with the eurozone and the anxieties expressed in the US, China and elsewhere about the negative consequences for global growth of the Euro Crisis, there is a real cause for concern.

It has been tempting for me to follow a number of noble Lords this afternoon in discussing the twists and turns of the Euro Crisis, not least because, as Moody's reiterated on Monday, the biggest single short-term threat to growth in the UK is a failure of the EU to solve that crisis.

As hundreds of billions of pounds are being talked about in respect of the Current Euro Crisis, it is easy to forget that the Government's decision to give an additional £2 billion a year to social care in the 2010 comprehensive spending review was the greatest ever increase in social care funding, and will lead to a vast increase in resources.

Thirdly, solving the Euro Crisis and ensuring that the IMF is properly resourced are both firmly in the British national interest.

A correct policy, it claims, was derailed by external shocks such as the rise in import prices, the Euro Crisis, the structural impact of the financial crisis, and so on.

We are being buffeted by the Euro Crisis, but the eurozone crisis is the inevitable result of the very policies championed by the British Chancellor at home.

What is the Government's approach to the current Crisis of the Euro?

The G8 summit last weekend failed to do anything to reassure markets that the Euro Crisis will be dealt with.

Greece is in near revolt, Spain has 25% unemployment and over 50% youth unemployment, Ireland is in a double-dip recession, Italy is in turmoil, 11 Prime Ministers have been booted out since the Euro Crisis began-all this to keep the EU political bandwagon on the road and the euro delusion going, never mind the social and financial cost of doing so.

All I will say is that the Government are undertaking extensive contingency planning to deal with all potential outcomes of the Euro Crisis.

We are now in a continuing double-dip recession, which this time will be blamed on the Euro Crisis.

Although it will entail no automatic bailout from the United Kingdom in relation to the Euro Crisis, we cannot be-and indeed we are not-indifferent to it.

In a document that the Government sent round after the report that we debated on the Euro Crisis, they say: "The decision not to be part of the Fiscal Treaty does not reduce our influence and has not damaged our reputation in Europe".

As someone who was heavily involved in the five tests analysis on UK membership of the euro, published nine years ago, I will be observing very closely how the Euro Crisis unfolds.

In my view, the credit rating agencies played a central part in the Euro Crisis.

We do not see why the CAP should be immune from the immense pressures facing the whole of the EU - not just the pressures arising from the Euro Crisis, but the overall pressures on the economies of member states.

Whatever the outcome of the Euro Crisis, it will continue to be a drag on our economy for some time to come.

He said that, "just as we had to tackle the Euro Crisis, so we have to tackle the growth crisis".

On growth, the Prime Minister used an instructive phrase in his post-summit press conference, when he said: “Just as we have to tackle the Euro Crisis, so we have to tackle the growth crisis”.

It is more necessary in the light of the deepening of the Euro Crisis and last week's European Council meeting, at which the role of the ESM was strengthened in both its ability to recapitalise the banks directly, which is the key to restructuring the banking system, and its ability to buy bonds where countries that are complying with their obligations are under pressure.

Of course, however, that beneficial situation has now reversed, largely because of the Euro Crisis.

There are those, such as the coalition Government, who claim that under the arcane procedures of section 4(4) of the European Union Act 2011, we should vote for this arrangement because it will solve the Euro Crisis and - miracle of miracles - will not affect us.

In fact, I asked the House of Commons Library this morning how many attempts the EU had made since 2008 to resolve the Euro Crisis, but it said that it was difficult to say in the time available because there had been so many and it was so complex.

May I ask my right hon. Friend why, as he told me on Monday, he thinks that the single currency needs a banking union, as the Crisis in the Euro has been caused not by the absence of a banking union, but by the absence of a single fiscal policy?

The Government argue that the only way to resolve the Crisis in the Euro is for its members - the states that subscribe to it - to create full fiscal and monetary union.

The UK, the report stresses, sees itself as an economy apart, with its own currency and so forth, pulled down by the fallout from the Euro Crisis.

However, there is a fundamental dishonesty, which led to the Euro Crisis, because countries that were never fit for it were admitted to that currency.

Banking union is the fourth major institutional development since the Euro Crisis started from which the United Kingdom has stood aside.

The Euro Crisis has made banking union essential in order to break the link between sovereign debt and the fact that nation states have had to underwrite their banks.

The continuing Euro Crisis all last year affected both confidence and our markets.

Yes, it is changing because of the Euro Crisis and the crisis of the capitalist economy in Europe, but it is not changing fundamentally in its structures and powers.

With the Ongoing Euro Crisis the European Union is changing.

The honest truth is that, notwithstanding the Euro Crisis and the fact that the rest of Europe is mired in recession, as shown by the situation in Cyprus, the idea that there would have been a continuum and that all would have been well is complete and utter nonsense.

My noble friend Lord Higgins talked about the Euro Crisis.

During the Euro Crisis, it came to the realisation-very late, but in a big way-that it had been a great mistake to confuse the toxic debt of banks with the toxicity of sovereign debt, and decided that they should not be confused.

A classic example is that the British economy has not avoided the consequences of the Euro Crisis simply because we are outside the euro.

The first delusion is the idea that the Euro Crisis is what it sounds like; that is to say that it is a crisis resulting from the existence of the euro and is the fault of the euro project.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Davies for expanding on what the report makes clear, which is that the Euro Crisis is part of a global crisis.

The OBR forecasts that over the course of this Parliament the eurozone will grow at a little over 2% and the UK will grow at nearly 9%, which of course is a tribute to the capacity of UK businesses, particularly small businesses, to adapt to the huge economic shock of the Euro Crisis.

What plans do the Government have for protecting Britain's economy in the event of a full-blown Euro Crisis?

The Prime Minister spoke of increased contingency planning to deal with the Euro Crisis.

The UK was saddled with a deficit of over 11% of GDP, and the developing Euro Crisis was shrinking the UK's export markets and creating a massive risk of financial contagion.

Unfortunately, he too would have faced a Euro Crisis, and things would have been very different from what he originally projected, just as things were different for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor when he made his original prediction.

” But let us look at how Germany and the rest of Europe have changed today, with the chronic Crisis in the Euro threatening global financial stability and condemning millions of young Europeans to chronic high levels of unemployment.

The first, which I consider very important and to which the Chancellor alluded, is the Euro Crisis and the Greek problem, which has the potential to turn from a manageable challenge into a major catastrophe.

The EU has faced huge problems in the last few years with the Euro Crisis and the possibility of Grexit, and now we have the refugee crisis, a humanitarian crisis which I believe is the greatest challenge to our values and the greatest challenge that the EU has ever faced.

At the same time, to avoid a further - perhaps fatal - Euro Crisis, many in Brussels and some of our EU partners, are also seeking to reform the EU, but the reforms they seek involve moving in the opposite direction.

Britain should not push unreasonable demands in the next 12 months on top of the very real issues the European Union has to deal with: resolving the long-term issues arising from the Euro Crisis - the short term has been resolved - and putting together the more Europe that we need effectively to tackle the migration crisis.

The Whole Euro Crisis has shown that it is a very inadequate form of governance and perhaps we could reform it.

With the Euro Crisis unresolved, the Chinese economy more fragile, the middle east unstable and the Us likely to raise rates shortly, does he agree that, given all those risks, it would be not only imprudent but extremely dangerous not to reduce the deficit now, while we have the opportunity to do so?

Strangely enough, therefore, the core eurozone countries that suffered the worst from the Euro Crisis have done well in exporting.

The most extreme example of the FSA being focused on bureaucracy, rather than dealing with the problems in the industry, came in 2010 at the height of the Euro Crisis, when many people doubted from day to day whether it would survive.

As we know, the problems are that the banks cannot lend more and that there is a super-rated dependency on banks anyway, but debt problems and so forth limit what the banks can lend to SMEs anyway, and the Euro Crisis killed cross-border bank lending within the EU.

His fiscal rules provided him with a good deal of leeway to adjust policy in response to the Euro Crisis, which was a heck of a shock to adjust to.

We will be affected, as the former Governor of the Bank of England said, if the Euro Crisis continues and there is aeuro collapse.