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EU Council and North Africa

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments and questions. I think that he is right about the response of the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States to events in Egypt. While, in my view, one can never be certain that every statement made by the European Union is being listened to that carefully, I believe that in regard to its statement that the Egyptian Government must choose reform and not repression, the recent behaviour of the army in Egypt has been encouraging. The right hon. Gentleman asked whether the current talks would be good enough to lead to transition. That is an extremely difficult question to answer. The point that I made to Vice-President Suleiman was that the more that the Egyptian Government could do to demonstrate that, for instance, they were bringing some opposition leaders into a transitional Government, the more they would be able to convince people that they were trying to reform, change, and deal with the constitutional issues. We have advised them to try to get ahead of events rather than taking a series of incremental steps, which I do not think are doing enough to respond to the aspirations of the Egyptian people. As the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, the transition is not just about the date of an election; it is about those building blocks of democracy that I mentioned earlier. All United Kingdom citizens who wanted to leave have been able to do so. We will continue to keep travel advice under review, including advice on travel to the Sinai peninsula. The right hon. Gentleman asked two very good questions about the renewable heat incentive, which is an absolutely vital initiative that we are taking, and about the green investment bank. Both projects are moving ahead. The Government have published structural reform plans with dates for implementation, so one thing that others can do is hold us to account when things do not happen during the week in which they are meant to happen, and I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will do that. On the economy, the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned sitting round the European Council table and talking about the impact of cutting budgets. My overwhelming impression was listening—we had to listen at some length—to reports from Greece, Portugal and Spain about their economies. Having seen what they have had to cut and the difficulties that they are in, the warning that I take from that is, ““Do not go back into the danger zone, where those countries still are.”” On al-Megrahi, I set it out as best I could in my statement. It is clear to me that those who think that a conspiracy was cooked up between BP, the British Government and the Scots to release al-Megrahi are not right. It was a Scottish decision by the Scottish Government—in my view, it was mistaken. As I have said, we have learned something today about what we were told in this House by Ministers. When hon. Members look at what was said in this House and what we have seen in these papers, I think that they will agree with me—I am trying to be very reasonable about this—that we were not given a complete picture.