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Treaty of Lisbon (No. 2)

The debate so far has very much been about liberalisation, and as my hon. Friend has already said, such powers exist. However, what is new in article 176A is the power to decide by qualified majority voting measures to"““ensure security of energy supply in the Union””," which is not necessarily about bullying Russia, but a redistributive mechanism in the European Union. We could be mandated, particularly taking into account the solidarity provision, to share—in other words, give—our energy supplies to other members of the EU, when countries outside the EU might have a better and clearer call on our resources because, for instance, they are a lot poorer. We could be giving energy to rich countries under the solidarity provision when we may wish to do something different. My hon. Friend is absolutely right about our powers being circumscribed under—