Treaty of Lisbon (No. 6)

We are debating what is supposed to be a reform treaty—that is what it was called before it became the treaty of Lisbon—and no area is more ripe for reform than the policies connected with international development and aid. The aid budget is part of the general EU budget, which is, as the House knows very well by now, a byword for inefficiency, mismanagement and waste. It has been subject to qualification by the auditors for 12 years in a row. No private sector organisation would have survived that. If the EU were a private company it would long ago have collapsed or been taken over, and the directors would have been sacked or in prison. If this really were a reform process, it would have tackled the lack of accountability and poor management at the heart of the European Union in its budget. We know that the Government share those misgivings, particularly on the aid side. The European Scrutiny Committee receives reports on the EU programme, and on one occasion last year it was, in its measured and diplomatic way, very critical of EU procedures. I will quote, almost at random:"““in general, evaluations point to long delays in implementation and highlight the rigidity and slowness of Commission procedures””." Many hon. Members who have been more intimately connected with the Department know full well that there is something seriously wrong with the delivery of aid at EU level. No reform was carried out, and instead the treaty centralises more powers. I strongly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), who described the process of capture in relation to the Foreign Office provisions of the treaty. The Government need to explain why, when this country has moved its aid programme away from the Foreign Office, the treaty moves in exactly the opposite direction. That need not have been done; it is a result of last year's secretive negotiation process. The Government would have got support from the House in opposing this if we had known about it, but the critical decisions were made in secret by officials in the early part of last year. The treaty text was then presented to member states only two days before the European summit in June, at which it was all politically decided. My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury is right about the politicisation of aid that will result from this, which is bound to undermine historical and traditional British priorities about aid and where it should go.