Lords seal ratification of Lisbon Treaty in UK

Last night the House of Lords brought to an end the to the long and careful parliamentary scrutiny of the Lisbon Treaty and approved it by giving a third reading to the EU Amendment Bill. The Conservatives made a last-gasp attempt to derail the process by tabling an amendment to delay the vote on third reading by four months, but this was comfortably defeated by a majority of 93. When the Bill is given royal assent today, the UK will become the 19th country to have ratified the treaty.

Our ratification of the treaty coincides with the start of the European Council meeting which will take place today and tomorrow. British ratification makes clear that our position is that the Lisbon Treaty is good for the UK and good for the EU. Whether or not the treaty can be salvaged will depend in part on the outcome of this Council meeting. While the impetus is on the Irish to take stock of last week's 'No' vote and assess whether an agreement can be reached, the views of the 26 other countries who also signed the Lisbon Treaty (and 19 of whom have now ratified it) should not be blithely ignored. This is a collective problem that requires a collective solution.

Some say that we should take the Irish 'No' vote as a hint to end the reform process and focus on policy delivery. Of course, we all, even those of us most closely involved in the process of drawing up the Lisbon Treaty, want to get away from institutional reform and focus on policy delivery. The most significant policy challenges facing the EU: tackling man-made climate change, the effects of globalisation on the most vulnerable in society, energy security etc will not wait for us to reform our institutional structure. As Gary Titley, the leader of the Labour MEPs, said this week, "globalisation continues apace".

But better institutions would make it easier to tackle these and other problems, and the checks and balances the reforms would bring in would reassure people that the EU is subject to democratic control.

Indeed, this week, the Parliament adopted the report by my colleague Eluned Morgan MEP to reform the electricity market in the Europe. In particular, it included proposals for full ownership 'unbundling', whereby companies would not be able to own both the production and distribution of electricity - good news for consumers, as the competition should prevent electricity prices from being distorted. This is a classic case of the "Europe of results" that a 21st century EU should aspire to be.

Getting beyond the self-serving hyperbole of, on the one hand, the Eurosceptics, who claim that any attempt to seek a compromise acceptable to Ireland is undemocratic, and , on the other hand, some ultra-federalists, who want a hard core of integrationist countries to go it alone, the reality is that the EU is still here and still needs reform.