Treaty of Lisbon (No. 5)

Let me complete this point first. An intervention from the right hon. Gentleman is always something to savour and look forward to, so I shall come to him in a moment. Across the House, we wish that the approach to foreign policy of EU members had a more forceful unity in facing up to Iran's development of nuclear weapons capability and the crimes of regimes such as those in Zimbabwe and Burma. There is no hostility to the co-operation of member states as nation states on a wide range of important issues. As the Foreign Secretary rightly said, that can be a means of implementing our foreign policy here in Britain. The vast majority of us in this House, including the Government, have always opposed the introduction of treaty changes that increase the role of the EU at the expense of member states and of institutions that go beyond supplementing co-operation and supplant it with supranational decision making. Indeed, there is almost British consensus that institutional change is not only irrelevant to an effective common foreign and security policy but can even be a substitute for it or a distraction from it. That was clear from the evidence given to the Foreign Affairs Committee on this subject, some of which makes interesting reading.