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Treaty of Lisbon (No. 4)

The hon. Gentleman has been talking about the changes—which are cosmetic in my view—in terms of competition in the Lisbon treaty. Will he accept that the protocol on the internal market and competition has identical legal force to the rest of the treaty—that is spelled out in the treaty itself—and says that the internal market"““includes a system ensuring that competition is not distorted””," which is the precise wording of the treaty of Rome? Will he also accept that the protocol, in what I think is a new provision, refers explicitly to the enhanced powers of European institutions"““under Article 352 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union””" if they are needed to achieve the goal of an undistorted competitive single market? He is simply wrong in the point he makes.