I fear that I will not be able to convince those on my own side as effectively in the time remaining, but I have their best interests at heart.

Strengthening the development efforts of the European Union is a matter of direct concern to many of the world's poorest people. Collectively, Europe is the world's largest aid donor. In 2006, members of the European Union together provided £32 billion of aid, which accounted for more than half of total global development assistance. As the world's largest single market, Europe is the most significant trading partner for developing countries and provides leadership on issues of great importance to them, including climate change, on which Europe lobbied in support of developing countries at the Bali conference and on which it set unilateral targets for greenhouse gases and established the world's first international carbon trading system.

The Lisbon treaty provides the next step in the evolution of the European Union's efforts to reduce poverty. During the cold war, the European Commission, along with other donor countries, too often provided politically motivated aid. However, in the late 1990s and the early years of this decade, important reforms were made to both EC and UK aid. Here, this Government established the Department for International Development in 1997, untied aid in 2001, and introduced the International Development Act in 2002, establishing poverty eradication at the heart of the UK's aid efforts.