Express. Date for key EU speech awaited

Downing Street is set to announce the date of David Cameron's delayed speech on Britain's future relations with the European Union.
After months of preparations, the Prime Minister was forced to cancel his planned address in the Netherlands last Friday due to the Algerian hostage crisis.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Sunday that the speech would now go ahead this week.

According to advance extracts released last week, Mr Cameron will warn that Britain could "drift towards the exit" from the EU unless there is real change in Brussels.

He has indicated he wants to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU and then seek "fresh consent" for the new arrangement from the British people - probably through a referendum some time after the next general election.

However he has yet to make clear what the terms of the referendum would be.

Liam Fox, a leading Tory Eurosceptic and former defence secretary, who been briefed on the contents of the address, said yesterday he was "broadly satisfied" with what he had been told.

"If that is the speech that is finally delivered, a great many of us will think that it's a speech that we've been waiting a long time for any prime minister to deliver," he said.