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To: Alex who wrote (33493)	5/8/1999 7:56:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 116960

Tories accuse government of euro plot The first 125 tonnes of gold will be sold in the next year The Tories are accusing the government of plotting to take Britain into the single currency by stealth after it announced plans to sell part of the country's gold reserves and buy euros. The UK is selling 415 tonnes of its 715 tonnes of gold, and is buying foreign currencies with the proceeds which is likely to amount to £2.2bn. A Treasury spokesman said the decision was an attempt to "restructure and rebalance the portfolio". But Tory eurosceptic and Shadow Trade Secretary John Redwood told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Saturday that Chancellor Gordon Brown should have allowed Shadow Chancellor Francis Maude to cross-examine him on the decision in the House of Commons. Trade and business implications But he said that Mr Brown had not had the courage to do so, and that the announcement made on Friday had been "smuggled out on election day when they obviously thought there'd be too much other news". "It looks very much as if it's part of preparing for the single currency by stealth," he said. He argued that Mr Maude should have been able to ask the chancellor why so much money was being invested in the euro at the moment, and if there was not something better which could be bought from the profits of the gold sales. "I want the opportunity to cross-examine my opposite number about the trade and business implications of all this," Mr Redwood said. He warned that the opposition would now be "watching very carefully to see whether this chancellor is husbanding international reserves in the best possible way". The decision had been more motivated by politics than by investment, he said. "It looks as if he's rather ashamed of what he's doing. It also does look ... that he's under pressure to prop up the euro at a time when it's performing very badly. 'Absolute rubbish' "It looks like a chancellor who's hell-bent on destroying the pound but doesn't have the courage to tell us," he added. Francis Maude has also attacked the decision. "They are trying to buy Britain's membership of the euro without a single vote being cast in favour of going in. They do not have the mandate to do this," he said. But the Treasury spokesman denied the accusations. "That's absolute rubbish, this has nothing to do with joining the euro," he said. The Tories have already accused the government of moving towards joining the single currency by launching a "national changeover plan", designed to prepare the country for the possible adoption of the euro. Ministers insist that the plan is simply a way of ensuring voters have a real choice if the question is put to them in a referendum, as it would be if the government decided conditions were right for joining. news.bbc.co.uk