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Financial Management

My hon. Friend has made the good point that reform is required. Of course, reform was mandated seven years ago in the Laeken declaration, when it was realised that Europe was too remote, bureaucratic and wasteful. Does he find it extraordinary that the Lisbon treaty and the European constitution out of which it grew have nothing to say about the matter? The acknowledged weakness, which has become a scandal, was not addressed in the very instrument—the Convention on the Future of Europe—that was told to reform Europe. Will my hon. Friend, in what are clearly his closing remarks, commit himself and our party to undertaking a genuine reform process, which goes to the root of the problem, rather than simply building stronger and more powerful institutions that are even more remote from the citizen?