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Treaty of Lisbon (No. 6)

I will make a little more progress, then I will happily give way. As I have said, important reforms of the European Union were made in the late 1990s and the early years of this decade. Brussels, the Kinnock reforms of the European Commission, and Chris Patten's work on reforming the European Council's external assistance have helped to make aid better targeted and more effective than it was in the past. Indeed, the improvements in EC aid have been recognised by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's development assistance committee and by the House of Lords European Union Committee. In a 2004 report, the latter noted that the European Commission had made significant improvements in aid management and organisational effectiveness, and, as I have said, in 2005 the United Kingdom, as holder of the European Union presidency, was instrumental in designing the European consensus on development. The consensus defined a common European approach to development based on the pursuit of the millennium development goals, and clarified how the Commission works within that common approach. Some Members may believe that the UK's contribution to aid through the EC would be better spent through our own bilateral channels—indeed, that has already been said today—but I believe that such a retreat from our European aid commitments would act against the best interests of the world's poorest people. By providing a proportion of our aid through the European Commission, we encourage other member states to raise the level of their commitment. The focus on development and Africa during the UK's presidency of the G8 in 2005 unquestionably galvanised European support for the breakthrough commitments by the 15 richest member states to spend 0.7 per cent. of national income on development by 2015. I simply do not believe that that commitment would have been achieved had this not been an issue on which we work together in Europe.