Intergovernmental Conference

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:14 pm on 23 July 2007.

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Photo of Jim Murphy Jim Murphy Minister of State (Europe) 5:14, 23 July 2007

It was remiss of me not to pay a warm tribute to my right hon. Friend Mr. Hoon, the former Minister for Europe, for his work in that role at the outset; it is possibly more important to do so now that he is Government Chief Whip. I also wish to pay my respects to the work of my right hon. Friend Keith Vaz, who was also a former Minister for Europe. He did an enormous amount of work in trying to destroy some of the myths around the issue of Europe and the European Union. I do not wish to pick on Mr. Mark Mardell, but any advice that anyone in the House can give to provide an accurate picture of the real benefit of the European Union to the United Kingdom is welcome. For example, it has meant 3 million jobs, co-operation on environmental issues, clean water, cleaner beaches, cleaner air—those are the real and substantive improvements and changes that the EU can deliver.

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Alan Connor
Posted on 24 Jul 2007 9:59 pm (Report this annotation)

First off, Show me the jobs created, opps you cant!

Environmental Activities do not need to be EU based, indeed banning mercury in barometers, yet aiming to force people to buy "energy saving bulbs" which funnily enough use mercury in their manufacture, seems a bit of a nonsense.

Clean water? you mean drinking water? Ours is certainly above the standards of the majority of europes.

Beaches, wow, clean beaches! and that helps the UK how?

Cleaner Air, and exactly how are the EU cleaning air?

But no mention of the Fishing stocks that have been decimated, the Commision told time and time again to stop fishing, or the north sea will be fish free in 5 years, have they stopped NO!