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Treaty of Lisbon (No. 4)

Or Liberal Democrat, for that matter. Yes, there almost certainly would be greater restraint, but I think that we all accept that that is not the debate that we are having now. I think that all parties are committed to having a referendum on that possibility, if it arises in future, as it may well do. Of course there are concerns about the single market. First, many UK businesses worry that their liberalisation is not reciprocated. A few days ago I was at Royal Mail's south-west London sorting office—a very efficient installation. When I looked out of the window, I saw the headquarters of TNT, a Dutch competitor. The general manager said, ““I'm all for liberalising the Royal Mail market, but why can't the Germans, the Dutch and the French do the same?”” and he is quite right. The logic is that prising open the other European markets will require stronger, not weaker, intervention by the Commission and the European Court of Justice. Precisely the same point can be made about areas in which there is frustration about the slowness of the single market's progress—a point to which the Conservative spokesman referred. The obvious example is services. It has taken years to get any kind of agreement on services in Europe. The agreement that we reached in 2006 is fairly weak; it does not respect the underlying principle of the origin of the country concerned, which is what would really open up a services market, which does exist. Clearly, for services liberalisation to progress faster, there would have to be more qualified majority voting and more European Union decision making on the matter. Finally on the single market, the right hon. Member for Wells said that all progress has come at a price—at the cost of regulation in Europe. He is right up to a point. There is a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy associated with European regulations and directives. Of course, we have often compounded it by gold-plating them here. The Secretary of State was right to point out that there is now a process—the Lamfalussy process—for making the system much more efficient. The question that I would pose to the right hon. Member for Wells if he was still in the Chamber is this: what is the counter-factual case? What is the alternative to having a bureaucratic regulation? It is probably having 27 bureaucratic regulations across Europe, which would compound the cost many times over. Let me briefly cover the items allocated for today's debate, and to the treaty powers relating to economic matters. The euro procedures clearly do not apply; I answered an intervention on that point. Other issues include the definition of the framework for commercial policy, which I do not think is controversial, and the co-ordinated approach to self-employment. I would have thought that such an approach was sensible. We have rules governing freedom of capital and professionals, but not self-employment, as would be logical. The issues to do with intellectual property rights are trickier. As I understand it, the measures will make it easier to have common European Union rules on copyright, trademarks and patents, which will make it easier to do business that involves them, and that will be good for British intellectual property right holders. However, as the Secretary of State conceded, when it comes to patents, the tricky issue of language has not been resolved. We will still not have unanimity, and that is a source of frustration. As the author of the Cable Bill—that famous copyright protection legislation—I look forward to seeing copyright protected across the whole of Europe, in a way that accords with the sanctions that I introduced in the House. Those are not issues on which there is a great deal of controversy. On the important contribution made by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson), one of the less discussed issues is that of what are called general services, of which the NHS is an obvious example. My understanding of the protocol governing the treaty is that it does not take us very far towards a common approach to NHS entitlements. In fact, article 2 of the protocol says:"““The provisions of the Treaties do not affect in any way the competence of Member States to provide, commission and organise non-economic services of general interest ““" The basic principles of the NHS would therefore remain pretty much intact, as I understand it. However, I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman to some degree. He was right to say that the Liberal Democrats were sympathetic to the Watts ruling. The question that we would ask is this: if it is right for people to buy a house, travel or exchange goods in Europe, what is wrong with their trying to pursue a higher life expectancy in countries that have better cancer treatment? Surely common sense would say that that is a reasonable expectation in an integrated market. People will do that, and as long as the basic frameworks of the NHS remain intact, I do not see anything fundamentally wrong with enlarging the concept of a single market to include health.