Treaty of Lisbon (No. 6)

It is a real pleasure and privilege to follow the hon. Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley). As he has reminded the House and demonstrated, he has a long and proud track record on this particular policy area and has rightly put the key principles of the treaty at the heart of this afternoon's debate. I also thank the shadow Secretary of State for his generous welcome to me. I was particularly pleased with his suggestion of consensus and I am certainly happy to do my bit to continue it across the House. I have to say, however, that a large chunk of his speech reminded me of many other debates on European affairs over the years where, as with other aspects of our debate over this particular treaty, there is very little consensus. It was nice to hear the familiar tones of what the hon. Gentleman had to say, but I regret that, for reasons that I shall advance as my speech progresses, we will not be able to support his amendment this evening. In particular, we cannot accept the assertion that the treaty is a step backwards in the provision of aid to the developing world. I know, however, that there will be many other areas of agreement and I look forward to further debates. In the context of globalisation, Europe faces many difficult, shared challenges, which I believe are fundamentally best responded to on a co-ordinated basis. In the face of the growing pace and sustained nature of those challenges, the Lisbon treaty has to reform Europe's institutions to make them more open, more efficient and effective. We have already debated key areas of consideration in the Bill where that is necessary, but that reform is also crucial to international development. Providing development assistance to the millions of people less fortunate than we are is first and foremost a moral and ethical imperative. It is nearly eight years since the UN adopted the millennium development goals, and those ambitious targets have framed the international community's work on development since then. But more than half way towards our 2015 target, the most recent UN assessment shows that we are a long way from meeting our goals. Regardless of Europe's current institutional arrangements, we believe that there are important roles that Europe must play in the delivery of those goals.