European Union (Amendment) Bill

When Conservative Members decry their former Prime Minister, who did so much, where he could, to keep the Conservative party in the European mainstream, that, more than anything else, reflects just how much the party has changed in recent years. The Lisbon treaty is, as we know, the conclusion of the collapse of communism—a freeing of the human spirit that we all celebrated—and the decision of the countries concerned to join the European Union, so that we now have 27 member states and we need to reform our structures. There are big questions before us this evening that the Opposition have as yet been unable to answer. For example, which specific line-by-line proposals in the Lisbon treaty make it more significant than the Maastricht treaty?