Sept 7th 2010 - Debate, Guidelines for the Employment Policies of the Member States.

Delivered by Derek Clark on 7 September 2010

Speech to Parliament Debate, Guidelines for the Employment Policies of the Member States. The only guideline is for the EU to stop interfering.

The Working Time Directive is a disincentive to work, why can't you let people work overtime when they want to, and please don't tell me that this is to protect workers from exploitation when the EU's puppet court, the ECJ, has ruled in favour of companies exploiting groups of workers by paying them less than the minimum wage in no less than four countries.

Are you aware that more than a fifth of newly qualified junior doctors in the UK are turned down because the WTD means they lack experience, and that more are dropping out of training for the same reason. Recently this house passed a report on independent truck drivers which will result in many of them packing it in. In voting today MEPs approved a paragraph in the Bove report which will add a massive reporting burden to SMEs, hours after President Barroso had complained that SMEs were being strangled by red tape.

The EU is the problem, not the answer, as the people of Europe are beginning to realise.

Derek Clark MEP Strasbourg 7th Sept 2010