European Union (Amendment) Bill

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is good if, within the EU, countries have the flexibility to think about more competitive economic policies and to set each other challenging goals to demonstrate what is possible in the world. Just before my hon. Friend made that important point, I was going to mention the previous Lisbon process and the Lisbon European Council of March 2000. This is particularly relevant to this group of amendments. The Council's aim was to"““make the European Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world””." That is exactly what hon. Members on both sides of the House have been talking about today. However, the Government carried out their own study last year, and in January 2007 the Treasury and the then Department for Trade and Industry published a joint assessment of the single market. Among its findings were that"““the rate of progress—in terms of strengthening and deepening the Single Market—has slowed down””." The key points were that"““Europe still lags behind its main competitors, notably the US””," that the ““long-standing challenge”” that I have just outlined was a ““far-off aspiration””, and that"““competition can be expected to become more intense, with the rapidly emerging industrialising economies of India and China catching up fast.””" That is exactly our concern. Since this Government have been in office, they and other European Governments have set themselves the right challenge—to make Europe more globally competitive. However, according to their own assessment of just one year ago, they have comprehensively failed to meet the goal set during the previous Lisbon discussions. One of the challenges for a future British Government—I think that it will probably have to be ours, because this one has simply failed—will be to set the bar higher, and to challenge Europe to be more globally competitive.