Treaty of Lisbon (No. 7)

I think that the former Prime Minister has enough problems wondering whether he can secure the support of the current Prime Minister, let alone the Chancellor of Germany, but the hon. Lady's point has been put firmly on the record. One would have thought that after so many years of careful consideration, the new treaty produced by the Convention on the Future of Europe and mulled over numerous time by Europe's Heads of State and Heads of Government would be a seamless web, clear in its outcomes and bringing new rationality to the EU's structures. The fact that, after all that, the document gives us unknown outcomes and inter-institutional strife is surely a strong case for the argument that it is fundamentally flawed. In his opening speech, the Minister for Europe claimed that this country's voting weight would increase as a result of the treaty. In purely simple terms that is true, but in practice the country's ability to influence European legislation would be diminished, because it would become harder to form blocking minorities. That is the key point. Of course in some circumstances it could work in our favour, but given the difficulty that the Government have had in holding together a sufficient blocking minority on the working time and agency workers directives, it would be foolish to underestimate the damage that the shrinking of our voting weight might do to our ability to protect vital national interests such as the preservation of a flexible labour market.