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Treaty of Lisbon (No. 2)

It is a pleasure to follow the poetry and prose of the Second Church Estates Commissioner, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell). He cited Churchill twice, as well as Thoreau and various other people of whom I had not heard. In the midst of that, the hon. Gentleman put his finger on a fundamental point: if we go back to the founding of the single market—I understand that the Conservative party still approves of that—we see that it implies the pooling of sovereignty. We cannot have a single market with common rules across national borders without such pooling. That must apply equally to the market for energy, but whenever the logic of being pro-single market is applied in a particular case, Conservative hackles rise and they cry, ““National sovereignty!”” It is surely impossible to have things both ways, although Conservative Members may try to do so. If we support the principle of the single market, including a single market in energy, we must accept some pooling of sovereignty. Simply to say that we do not like a treaty because it involves some qualified majority voting on the structure within which the single energy market will operate is inconsistent. If we will the end, we have to will the means.