Treaty of Lisbon (No. 4)

I thank the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) for highlighting how extraordinary it is that we have so little time to debate this Bill in the required detail. I thought there might just possibly be some degree of consensus in the debate on the single market. There is a specific question within the governing party as to whether the Government support the directive on cross-border health care—a point raised by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson)—and we look forward to hearing their views on that, but on the general issue of the single market, consensus could be found if we were to look for it, although after a slightly snippy contribution from the Secretary of State I am not sure that we found it this afternoon. Those of us who are somewhat sceptical about some aspects of the European Union welcome the idea of trade; we want to bring down barriers and we are against protectionism. That point of view has been there from the very beginning when the UK joined the Common Market, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) pointed out. There is also a recognition by those on the Government Benches and others who tend to be more sympathetic to the European Union that not everything is going quite as well as it might be in this regard. The Government's own assessment of the single market, published a year or so ago, said that"““the rate of progress—in terms of strengthening and deepening the Single Market—has slowed down in recent years.””" There is a recognition on all sides that too much regulation is coming from the EU and that that is damaging the competitiveness of Europe as a whole and the single market, and in particular that it is causing difficulties with job creation. The Minister for Europe made a point last night about there being 92 million economically inactive citizens of the EU; moreover, EU growth is slower than that of the US and our unemployment is higher. As the Prime Minister said when he was Chancellor,"““we cannot claim today's European social model is fair or effective when there are 20 million people unemployed and nearly half of them for more than a year.””"