Treaty of Lisbon (No. 8)

I cannot give way in view of the time. If Conservative Members wish to dismiss the content of the treaty as mere institutional tinkering, one must ask why they feel so strongly about the need for a referendum. Either the treaty is about institutional tinkering, and thus the question of a referendum is completely irrelevant, or there is a powerful case for a referendum because the treaty has more significance. The Conservative party needs to get its act together and its thinking straight on this issue. Conservative Members seem to have forgotten that over the past 25 years every party that has been explicitly opposed to the European Union has lost the subsequent general election. That is largely because the public are far in advance of the Eurosceptic tendency. Whatever Conservative Members might think about the gut feeling of some of their party's members and their small band of core supporters, the anti-European tendency in the country today represents a minority—and not an election-winning minority. I encourage forward-thinking members of the Tory party to take that on board and to explain it to some of their colleagues. As long as the party has an intrinsic, obsessive, anti-European ethos, it will never come around to supporting the policies that are needed to deal responsibly with climate change. It is important that the EU reflects its new expansion with the involvement of 27 members rather than 15. It is important that it changes its arrangements, such as on qualified majority voting, and that we have a single voice to the outside world. Rather than having a presidency that rotates every six months, it should last for a longer period to give continuity to policy. The EU must be the leading group of nations in the world on advancing climate change policy. However—this will be my final point, because I know that the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) wishes to speak—climate change cannot be advanced solely by top-down institutional structures. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) seems to assume that because there was a gigantic market failure, there will suddenly be a gigantic market solution, but the market alone does not hold the solution. We will need not only institutional change at the political level, the encouragement of enterprise and the development of new science and technology, but individual behaviour change and the greater involvement of local and regional government throughout the European Union. Does the Minister for the Environment agree that, on climate change, we need not only the right policies at national and EU level, but far greater involvement of local government in the United Kingdom?