Treaty of Lisbon (No. 2)

I thank my right hon. Friend for that, but the Conservative belief seems to be never to let the facts get in the way of an argument. If the fact is not convenient, it is set aside. In an intervention, the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who unfortunately for me has left the debate—he and I go back a long way and I have a high regard for him—asked the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton what was going on. I have to tell him that we are going on with this treaty. Reference was also made to that indefinable future when we have a Conservative Government. At any such time as the hon. Gentleman wants to work on energy policy, he will work on it along the lines of this treaty as specified under article 176A. Conservative Members know that they will never seek to renegotiate it, but act within it. I know that, the hon. Gentleman knows that, the House knows that and I presume the country knows it, too. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe talked in his intervention about the various contracts that we have already made, which the EU could not an did not interfere with. We have made contracts with Norway, Qatar and Algeria for the supply of gas. Contracts in Bulgaria were also mentioned, which, like the others, have been freely negotiated within the EU. I thus have great difficulty understanding the Conservative position. I suppose I can understand the need they feel to push for a referendum, but my view is that the Conservatives spend too much time watching ““The West Wing”” on television. They come back to character, trust and all the rest of it, but it does not play at all with the public. That is a matter for them, not for me. The Secretary of State, in his speech and in the documents he gave us, talked about the lead that the United Kingdom has in the development of EU policy on energy. That was the fruit of the Hampton Court discussions under our presidency in 2005, which flowed through to the spring conference of 2007, and led to an energy package and energy policy for Europe approved by the Council on 8 and 9 March 2007. The principle of solidarity applies—a theme that I shall develop later. Energy policy, security of energy and climate change are all interconnected. There is already a single market in gas and electricity, and once again the single market flows from the single European Act of 1986, entered into by the noble Lady Thatcher. A single market exists for gas and electricity. It exists for the benefit of consumers, with competitive prices and appropriate transport and storage infrastructures. A great deal has been made of the fact that the revised European constitution—as it is called by Open Europe; we call it an amending treaty—will hand new powers over energy policy to the EU: there would be a specific legal base for EU legislation on energy, and energy would for the first time be subject to majority voting. As Opposition Members such as the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) said, the amending treaty extends qualified majority voting to new policy areas, and some of the new articles will be subject to QMV, reflecting existing practice for EU legislation in certain fields, including energy policy. The amending treaty will streamline and speed up decision making in a number of technical areas. The UK has always insisted on maintaining ultimate national control in the key areas of justice and home affairs, social security, tax, foreign policy and defence. The Lisbon treaty clarifies that position for the UK. Overall, the impact of QMV under the Lisbon treaty will be significantly less than, for example, under the Single European Act or the treaty of Maastricht.