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Treaty of Lisbon (No. 4)

I always try hard to say yes to the right hon. Gentleman. His remarks, however, are principally about the old constitutional treaty, which has been abandoned. The process has been abandoned. We are debating the new treaty of Lisbon—the reform treaty. The House has ample opportunity to debate that, and I and all my Cabinet colleagues will debate it with him and others over the next few weeks. Crucial to the EU's success as a dynamic knowledge economy is the ability of our people to think, exploit and protect new ideas and innovation. The Community trade mark and design schemes have already proved highly popular with UK businesses, helping them to expand and safeguard their ideas in new EU markets. New article 97a establishes a legal base for the EU to agree measures to create European intellectual property rights and to provide uniform protection of IPR throughout the EU. Qualified majority voting will now apply to all aspects of the creation and administration of European IPRs, except for the issue of language requirements, which will still be decided by unanimity. Community IPRs can foster further investment in research, design and innovation. Based on precedent and our experience of 20 years in the single market, qualified majority voting is critical. It can help to ensure that existing community IPRs can be updated quickly and flexibly as technology, business and society progress. I hope that it will also help to unblock negotiations—which have been stalled for many years—on the Community patent, and bring member states closer to agreement. We believe that the retention of unanimity for language issues is crucial to ensure that excessive translation costs are not placed on United Kingdom businesses applying for Community patents. In our view the translation of patents should be limited as far as possible, and unanimity voting will allow us to deflect any proposals that we consider damaging to business in that context. The introduction of new article 176A provides a specific article enabling discussion and agreement of EU energy measures for the first time. We debated those last week. The new text on the common commercial policy ensures that the EU can continue to lead in efforts to open markets and reduce trade barriers in the case of rich and poor countries alike. The new text gives more scope for the Community to negotiate and conclude wide-ranging trade and investment agreements of major benefit to member states with third countries. For example, the EU is currently engaged in trade and investment negotiations with countries such as India and Korea. Ambitious investment agreements would increase access to their markets for UK companies, creating new jobs and increasing trade. The text also imposes an obligation on the Commission to update the European Parliament on the progress of its trade negotiations, increasing the transparency of Community-level trade negotiations. UK business leaders have agreed that the Lisbon treaty will deliver a more effective, robust and efficient European Union to help drive forward measures such as the further liberalisation of the single market that are good for UK companies, workers and consumers. Sir Michael Bishop, chairman of British Midland Airways, said recently:"““The EU needs to be able to take decisions quickly and implement them consistently over the long term. That is why the amending Treaty is important to business and important for Europe's future.””" Bill Thomas, European president of EDS, has said:"““The new amending Treaty will ensure that we have dynamic EU institutions capable of promoting reform and delivering competitiveness and growth across Europe.””" The same point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas). I prefer those views on the treaty to the views of Opposition Members. I fundamentally believe that, by moving us on from the endless discussions about EU institutional reform that some Members are so keen to continue, the Lisbon treaty can help us to build a Europe ready for the 21st century: a Europe focused on the issues that matter, such as jobs, growth, and open and competitive markets. It should be possible for Members throughout the House to agree on one thing, the absolute priority of strengthening the competitiveness of the European economy. That was made clear in the European Commission's fundamental review of the single market, published last year. The review reflected many of the policies and reforms for which we have been negotiating, including a new, flexible approach to single market policy to promote competition fully, reduce the burden of regulation, and encourage innovation. It focused on key priorities from which businesses and citizens can benefit together, such as further liberalisation of the energy and telecoms markets, the use of competition policy tools to reduce barriers for businesses, and allowing consumers to benefit from more choice and lower prices. The Commission has already introduced a system to monitor the market and ensure its competitiveness, enabling the EU to crack down on markets where there are still significant barriers to competition. Full liberalisation of European network industries in particular, such as energy, telecoms, post and transport, could bring an extra £52 billion to £66 billion to the EU economy, create between 140,000 and 360,000 jobs, and reduce prices significantly. Progressive liberalisation in the telecoms sector throughout the 1990s has already led to cheaper prices and more choice for EU consumers. Prices for national and international calls in the EU fell by an average of more than 40 per cent. between 2000 and 2006. I believe that it is time to build on that success, and to deliver even greater price savings and choice to business and consumers. We are also pushing for full and swift implementation of the services directive across the EU to make the free movement of services a practical reality. Services account for 70 per cent. of EU gross domestic product, but for only 20 per cent. of intra-EU cross-border trade. The agreement of a wide-ranging EU services directive was a major step forward in tackling that covert form of protectionism. Full implementation of the directive will make it easier for service providers to set up and deliver services in other member states, increasing access to new markets and consumer choice. It could be worth between £4 billion and £6 billion per year, and could bring about 80,000 new jobs to the UK economy. A truly enterprising Europe must slash the bureaucracy that holds opportunity back, and I am glad to say that ensuring better regulation is now a priority in Europe. The EU is working towards achieving its target of a 25 per cent. reduction in administrative costs, which will help to promote fair, open competition, empower consumers and encourage innovation, and which promises an increase of up to £100 billion in EU GDP.