Treaty of Lisbon (No. 6)

The Secretary of State is pushing at an open door when it comes to convincing many of us that co-operating with the European Union on this matter is a sensible approach. Will he, however, address the points on which there was serious disagreement between the Government and the EU during the negotiations on the treaty? For example, many of us would see the establishment of DFID as one of the achievements of this Government but, with the treaty, international development will be subsumed under, and answerable to, the external action policy. In other words, foreign policy will come first, and international development will come second. References to the most disadvantaged—that is, the pro-poor policy—will be removed by the treaty, and many of us are worried that this will result in a foreign policy that is much more geared towards middle-income countries, in contrast to the pro-poor policy that has been commendably pursued by DFID since the Doha round and the establishment of the millennium development goals.