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European Council

My Lords, perhaps I may take the opportunity to thank my noble friend the Leader of the House for repeating the Statement and, through him, to congratulate the Prime Minister on his perseverance and clarity in his clearly difficult negotiations in Brussels. One of the successes of the Statement is that it is forward-looking. We all know of the difficult issues that are still with us, two or three years after the financial crisis, in the peripheral countries of the eurozone. It was surprising to hear so much time devoted by the Official Opposition to the past and what the Government might or might not have promised in previous years. Media reports suggest that some concessions were made in terms of the financial perspectives moving forward to the period 2014 to 2020—indeed, the Germans secured their Lisbon treaty revision to establish the financial stability facility—but it was disturbing to hear that there was agreement with the French that the common agricultural policy would remain untouched. In other words, our desire to achieve greater efficiencies will not now bear fruit. Will my noble friend reassure us that we will continue with our commitments to reform the common agricultural policy? I wonder also whether he could reassure us that the newer eurozone countries, which have done very well by the structural funds and would naturally be loath to see them cut back, will nevertheless have conversations with us to attain that end, because we cannot all have cake every day.