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Treaty of Lisbon (No. 8)

All I can say is well done Mr. Lester Brown. I hope that the meeting is successful, as the issue is important. I accept that the European Union has done many important things that have benefited our world—it has made the climate better and our environment better—but I want to concentrate on where Europe has performed extremely badly, which is in agriculture, farming and the lamentably slow process of common agricultural policy reform. In this time of changing climate, it is important that Europe should change and modernise its agriculture. As we have seen, in recent decades Europe was all about surpluses, but now the boot is on the other foot and we are talking about shortages. The hon. Lady talked about the rising price of grain. It is right that Europe should produce more food now, not only for its own security, but so that it does not import food that is needed elsewhere—being a collection of rich nations, we can outbid the poorer nations.