Treaty of Lisbon (No. 4)

I think I should go on. I say to my hon. Friends in particular that their arguments sometimes compare the European Union with perfection, as if there were a perfect alternative. I merely suggest that although the European Union is not perfect, the alternative is very much worse. A comment was made about having 27 different sets of regulations rather than one, and that was perfectly reasonable, particularly as we are largely at fault because we have gold-plated almost every EU regulation. The recent arguments about what might have happened with Northern Rock show that the very issues raised were issues gold-plated by this Government, not by the EU itself. My experience of environmental issues suggests that the single market has benefited us considerably and that many of our most important decisions would not have been made without the pressures of the EU. If anyone really thinks that we would have had a proper water system in this country if we had not signed up to the water directive, they do not know the history. People can certainly not argue that we could have a clean air or clean water policy, within which the single market has to operate, if there were no EU. We have to be a bit serious about the effect of the changes. I agree with the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), who referred to the symbolic concession made by the British Government. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) explained what he said experts thought of the matter, but his quotation was not from experts, but from Mr. Sarkozy. That is like explaining the Iraq war by quoting Mr. Blair—we are not talking about an expert, but about someone who is parti pris. I want to look at independent sources. Mr. Sarkozy was putting forward his case, as politicians do. I would much prefer to listen to the Law Society, which clearly tells me that the change does not water anything down. It is symbolic; I think it a pity that it was made and that the Government did not argue well enough, but the fact is that fundamentally there is no change and nobody should be worried about the treaty as far as a single market is concerned. We should recognise that if we want to change and improve the single market, that will mean Britain agreeing to do things together with others so that together we can create a more effective market. Instead of complaining about that, we ought to be out there explaining why it is worth while. It is better for my constituents that they can travel and know that there are the same standards of health and hygiene throughout the European Union. It is better for business men in my constituency to know that they can trade in the EU and that the standards are the same. Above all, it is because the EU is the world's largest single market that it can get the terms of trade that we need in the world, and that is so important to us. Having been president of the Agricultural Council, I have negotiated on the international trade in agricultural products. I can tell the House that the agreements were made between Europe and the United States. The other countries made speeches, but the decisions were made between the world's two biggest trading units. Anybody who undermines Britain's membership of the EU undermines our ability to play a proper part in the international trading arrangements on which we, of all nations in the world, depend most. Some of my hon. Friends ask, ““There's a bigger world out there—why do we concentrate so much on Europe?”” I say to them simply this: in the European Union we have a voice in the formulation of trading policies that enables us to create the conditions in which world trade is carried out.