Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-152"
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"en.20000516.7.2-152"2
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"Mr President, as British Conservatives, we have always opposed the Working Time Directive. The idea that politicians in Brussels or Strasbourg should determine how many hours different people work across Europe is, we believe, fundamentally daft. To extend it to groups such as offshore oil workers and sea fishermen is particularly so.
However, because of the special issue of over-worked junior doctors in the UK, as Conservative MEPs we voted last November to extend the directive to them. We very much hoped that this would pressure national governments – especially our own – to produce a better deal. Certainly Parliament as a whole was of similar mind, hence the Conciliation Committee on which I was privileged to serve. I extend congratulations to you, Mr President, in your former capacity as president of that conciliation group – plus Mrs Smet and Mr Rocard. I believe in the circumstances we could not have done any better, but those three played a major role in that.
I should briefly like to mention a point made by some of my colleagues from that delegation. I hope other nationals will forgive me if I mention only other British colleagues, for a reason that will become apparent.
The first speaker in the main meeting was Mr Hughes. I am not known for agreeing with him regularly but I congratulate him on the intensity of what he said which set the meeting off to a very good start. He was followed by Mrs Lynne – also due to speak today – who reinforced what was said with great vigour. I mention that because, when it came to my turn to speak, it enabled me, as a British delegate from a third party, to speak in support, despite the fact that all three parties have many different policies on different issues. The fact that I could say that on this issue we were speaking as one and it was a cross-party alliance hopefully helped to reinforce the overall message and the will of Parliament. One of my colleagues afterwards said that point was a powerful intervention. Certainly it was meant to be.
Imagine my disappointment after the meeting when an official came up to me and said that while I was making those points on behalf of Parliament another Member also from the UK was busy shaking his head negatively the whole time that I was speaking. That will not have strengthened our case. It may or may not have made any difference but certainly it will not have done the Parliamentary delegation any good service.
A few weeks later, we did the best that we could. It will be presented – as you, President, have already presented it – as "nine years". But it is, as you know, nine years, plus two years, plus one year. The UK Government will add that up to twelve years as against the 13 years which the UK Government was asking for initially.
Having only got what we consider minor concessions, we can confirm that, as British Conservatives, we neither support the Working Time Directive nor its extension to any other grouping. We still support a better deal for junior doctors; we will still continue to pressure our own government to provide it, but a directive from the European Parliament is clearly not the right way to secure it."@en1
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