Miliband: No challenge on red lines

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Mr Miliband said that as long as the red lines - which provide the UK with opt-outs and exemptions from four key policy areas - continue to be respected, there is no question of a referendum on the treaty, as demanded by Conservatives.

He was speaking ahead of a grilling later on Tuesday by the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee, which issued a report last week finding that the new treaty is "substantially equivalent" to the constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005 and questioned whether the red lines would hold in practice.

The Foreign Secretary insisted that the Reform Treaty is "different in its legal structure, different in its legal content and different in its political consequences" from the constitution.

At his first EU summit as Prime Minister in Lisbon on Thursday, Gordon Brown is expected to join other European heads of government in agreeing the legal text of the new treaty, before signing it in December.

Mr Miliband said a meeting of EU foreign ministers to discuss the text in Luxembourg on Monday made clear that Britain's four red lines - which protect the UK's independence on justice and home affairs, tax and social security, foreign and defence policy, and a legally-binding Charter of Fundamental Rights - were "fully secure".

He said he had obtained "reassurance" over concerns expressed by the European Scrutiny Committee and others that Westminster might be placed under the direction of Brussels by a clause stating that national parliaments "shall contribute" to the good functioning of the EU.

Critics were suggesting that "the rest of Europe is pushing us to adopt an agenda contrary to what was wanted in Britain," Mr Miliband told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

But he insisted: "I had no evidence of that yesterday. People respected the new position that we were in after the No votes in the French and Dutch referendums of 2005.

"We have a new amending treaty which is of a piece with the previous treaties that have amended the EU over the last 30 years. In respect of the so-called red lines which are important to us, there was no challenge to them."