European Affairs

I realise that the fact that we have two seats is established within the treaty base and would require unanimity to change. The hon. Lady follows such matters closely, and she is right. However, I reiterate that that does not mean that we should not change it. The major development since the House last debated European affairs is the entry into force of the Lisbon treaty. It is worth recording the original terms set for the project by the Laeken declaration of December 2001. That document stated that""the European institutions must be brought closer to its citizens"" and that the peoples of Europe""feel that deals are all too often cut out of their sight"." The declaration called for more democratic legitimacy in EU institutions. It is now clear that in those original terms, at least as far as this country is concerned, the treaty project has been a lamentable failure. The treaty's entry into force is a matter of regret to Conservatives and should be to the Government as well, if they were in any way consistent. It is a matter of public record that this Government sought to make 275 amendments to the original EU constitution's text, to which it is almost universally agreed that the Lisbon treaty is substantially equivalent. Of those, 27 were accepted. A treaty is now in place, but the Government objected profoundly to many of its provisions in the first place.