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Treaty of Lisbon (No. 6)

It is a pleasure to wind up this excellent debate, which started in characteristic style with the Secretary of State treating us—albeit with great charm—to the normal campaign of explanation that the treaty is a wonderful, innocuous document and that any Member who could not appreciate its merits was simply suffering from the usual Conservative paranoid delusions about its contents. He was quick to outline benefits such as the enshrined emphasis on poverty eradication, which we also applaud, but I had hoped that he would have been just as quick to acknowledge some of the shortcomings. All too often in debates of this nature, it is easy to get caught up in the detail and to miss the bigger picture. So let us be clear about what we are debating today. The treaty does little to improve the efficiency of EU aid; in fact, it does the reverse. It has the potential to decrease the freedom of action of member states to react to international crises, and it actively politicises the delivery of aid—something that the Government previously claimed to oppose.