MP Steve Baker head of Tory group plotting exit from the EU

Mr Baker has revealed the alliance of MPs – named Conservatives for Britain – will urge the British public to vote to leave EU should David Cameron not secure the package of reforms he wants for the country.

Update: speaking to the Bucks Free Press, Wycombe MP Steve Baker explains his views on Europe and the government.

The group has signed up more than 50 members of the government, including former Cabinet ministers Owen Paterson and John Redwood, organisers say, with more being recruited.

In a sensational column for the Telegraph, Mr Baker said: “We wish David Cameron every success but, unless senior EU officials awake to the possibility that one of the EU’s largest members is serious about a fundamental change in our relationship, our recommendation to British voters seems likely to be exit.

“We are willing to consider how to prepare for an “out" campaign if, lamentably, the European Union establishment will not allow the UK a new relationship of trade and co-operation.

“David Cameron has been spectacularly successful in Europe. No other Prime Minister has secured a cut in the European Union budget.

“David Cameron kept us out of a centralising EU fiscal treaty and took our country out of the Eurozone bailouts, arguably the first ever return of powers from Brussels.

“Conservatives have confidence in the Government¹s capacity to renegotiate our membership of the European Union before the British people take the decision to remain or leave.

“That is the fundamental issue. We are an outward-looking, free trading nation which feels acutely the lack of democratic consent for European supranational government.”

Mr Baker, voted into Parliament as MP for Wycombe for the first time in 2010, is a vocal figure on Europe and spoke out about Britain’s involvement in the EU at the Bucks Free Press election hustings in May.

The former RAF officer claims EU rules governing British business is stopping the country from looking to other emerging markets and possible major trading partners such as China and Africa.

The MP criticised the setup of the EU, which he says is not currently equipped to put up with the pace of change in the world due to the “slothful legislative machinery of supranational government”.

And he has called for an end to “the supremacy of EU law over ever more matters” in British citizens’ daily lives, in a stance echoing Nigel Farage’s Ukip.

Mr Baker has taken an active role in attempting to secure a package of changes for Britain in its role within the EU, which Prime Minister Mr Cameron is currently in talks to achieve.

Writing in his column for the BFP last month, Mr Baker said he is in favour of scrapping the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a British bill of rights which he says would allow our supreme court to be “ultimate arbiter” on matters of law in this country.

He told the BFP: “A key pledge [before the election] was to negotiate real change in Europe, an issue on which I took an active role in during the last Parliament.

"Conservative attempts to legislate for an in-out referendum by 2017 were foiled by other parties. That referendum bill should now reach the Lords smoothly. It remains to be seen how their Lordships react to it."