Treaty of Lisbon (No. 5)

We are happy to send people of any political stripe to the EAS, although I do not know whether Tories would want to go. We can address that question another time. I am happy to confirm the Government's continued commitment to UK presence on the United Nations Security Council. Like every hon. Member, I support that presence: we argued for clarity in the Convention and the treaty to safeguard that position, and nothing in the treaty will undermine it. Only sovereign states can hold seats at the Security Council and the EU is not a state, and will not become one. Under current arrangements, the President of the EU and the high representative sometimes already address the Security Council, if they are invited to do so, but that does not make them members nor negate our membership. As the Foreign Affairs Committee has said, the treaty"““will not undermine the position of the UK in the United Nations system nor the UK's representation and role as a Permanent Member””." For the sake of completeness, let me now turn to three aspects of European security and defence policy, on which we asked searching questions in the Convention to defend our position. The first is permanent structured co-operation. One of the UK's priorities on defence—in both the EU and NATO—is to get our partners to shoulder more of the international security burden and to get them to develop the right capabilities and provide the right sort of forces so that they can help to tackle the security challenges that we face. The treaty includes a new provision—permanent structured co-operation—focused solely on developing EU member state capability in line with those aims. To become a member of permanent structured co-operation, EU member states will need to commit to a higher level of capability development. The prospect of membership will, we hope, encourage member states to develop the sort of deployable, flexible and sustainable forces for which we have been calling.