I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) on securing the debate. He has done the House a service in drawing attention to the increasing conflict between the globalised free market and the need for environmental protection. I am sure that the debate will continue over the coming years and will be the main subject of political debate in the next century.

The timing of today's debate is significant, given that yesterday my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister published a document outlining the way in which the Government will deliver their Kyoto commitments; and that last week the French Government decided to withdraw their support from the multilateral agreement on investment. It is worth dwelling on those two points because, in two weeks' time, the Government will be pursuing the Kyoto agenda at the Buenos Aires conference. Securing an agreement between the demands of the United States, China and the developing world on the setting of emissions limits, while keeping the wheels of free trade turning, will not only require great political skill, but will again heighten the tension between free trade and environmental protection.

On the subject of the MAI, I draw the attention of the House to early-day motion 1700, which appears on today's Order Paper. I urge hon. Members to read it and sign it if they feel able to do so. Although the MAI was only a small part of the much wider GATT agenda, it was significant, reflecting the changing climate in thinking on globalisation. Increasingly, the thinking now—not only in the United Kingdom but abroad—is that we can no longer accept the orthodoxy that we have been asked to accept for the past 50 years. Environmental concerns are increasingly at the heart of worldwide economic debates.

I want to ensure that the Minister has ample time to reply to the debate, so I shall conclude. However, I endorse the specific questions asked by my hon. Friends the Members for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) and for Nottingham, South (Mr. Simpson), which I hope that the Minister will be able to answer in detail.

Today, we have discussed reform of the World Trade Organisation and its limitations in dealing with environmental matters. Perhaps a much bigger issue is the nature of the international institutions that have developed in recent years, and whether those organisations are capable of dealing with the new economic situation that we now face. I wonder whether the WTO, for example, can ever be reformed to deal fully with the sustainable development agenda, or whether—given that we have not only a World Health Organisation but a World Trade Organisation—we now need a world environment organisation.