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Treaty of Lisbon (No. 4)

The right hon. Gentleman is correct. In my earlier professional career, I tried to help establish common markets in Latin America and Africa. All of them failed because they lacked strong institutional underpinning. The European Union is the one that has succeeded. Of course, that underpinning does not have to be rigid; one of the major innovations that is not referred to in the treaty, but which has become part of Commission practice, is what is called mutual recognition—recognition that we are gradually deepening the single market through mutual acceptance of other countries' rules. That is why there is now mutual recognition of professional qualifications, for example. That does not have to take the form of blanket harmonisation. Those moves are progress. I shall cite a few topical recent examples of Commission and Court rulings that have taken forward competition policy and the single market in a common-sense, practical way to the benefit of consumers. First, the European institutions stood up to the credit card companies on the charges that they imposed on shops for clocking up credit card transactions. The Office of Fair Trading had a go at the companies, but it was the European Union that really made the big difference to consumers. The European institutions tackled the monopoly that British Airways and Virgin had on transatlantic flights—an issue that no British Government had been willing to deal with—and opened up the low-cost airline business. We may have doubts about that business for environmental reasons, but from a consumer point of view it was a major advance. [Interruption.] As the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) is trying to prompt me to say, there have been considerable advantages on telephony, as a result of roaming charges, and before that, there were many significant advances on telephone costs. Those are all achievements of the single market concept. The European institutions also stop Governments doing foolish things. I am tempted to mention Northern Rock. Of course we can all criticise what the Government are doing, and the press will do so, but the one institutional constraint on the Government's aid to the bank is the European Union. That is what is binding the Chancellor of the Exchequer; he is totally constrained by the EU. Those are some of the many practical ways in which the single market benefits us.