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European Council

How watertight travel bans are partly depends on their exact terms, but I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s reservations about the travel bans on senior people in Zimbabwe. It is inevitable that the bans cannot prevent leaders of countries from travelling to the United Nations and other international meetings because that is required by international treaties to which all countries of the EU have signed up. We know from Zimbabwe that the bans have been both inconvenient to the leaders concerned and humiliating. Future decisions on nuclear power stations will remain a matter for the United Kingdom Government. As I said, there has been no change—in the absence of a treaty change there could not be—to the basis for decisions in that respect. We wanted a decision about 2007 energy liberalisation in the conclusions to test, in a sense, whether European Heads of State and Government around the table were serious about that liberalisation, which is for consumers, not industrial users. It is my judgment that they are, although time will tell. Although sometimes we take three steps forward and two back, overall, including in countries with a protectionist past and present, the move is towards greater liberalisation because the benefits of that are perfectly plain to everyone. On my remarks about the summit being workmanlike, I have always believed in litotes, rather than hyperbole, and 35 pages of conclusions sounds to me like being workmanlike.