Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-17-Speech-2-038"
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"en.20060117.5.2-038"2
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"Mr President, having sat through this debate, I have a message for the dockers gathered in Strasbourg. I say to them that I have heard Member of Parliament after Member of Parliament line up and put forward arguments which are in the interests of the people of Europe, and Member of Parliament after Member of Parliament expressing sympathies with the underlying arguments that they are presenting. Rather than standing and attacking this House, they should take a step back, listen to what is being said in this debate and give their support to this House. That is my appeal to them.
Tomorrow, this House will be considering a proposal that it effectively rejected in November 2003. It is a project that the Commissioner has tried to distance himself from entirely and a process that is democratically deficient, owing to a failure to consider, consult or compromise with those at its heart.
It is clear that this proposal was designed with continental ports in mind, with the desire to liberalise the port services market, which is, for the most part, still nationalised. That is a welcome and necessary step, but it needs to be done in the right way.
However, the United Kingdom ports industry has set itself apart from its continental counterparts. Our ports are privately owned. They receive no financial assistance from the government and capital for new investment is raised within the market. Owing to the large number of thriving ports, the industry already enjoys the healthy competition that this proposal seeks to achieve.
The move to impose such a landlord model on United Kingdom ports will be enormously damaging. The threat of a trend towards a non-permanent workforce will lead to a lack of job security, lower skills levels, lower wages, a deterioration in working conditions, and will have a detrimental impact on the surrounding communities.
My constituency, in the north-west of England, has a long and proud history in the maritime industry, with ports such as Liverpool, Manchester and Heysham numbering among some of the largest on the United Kingdom coastline. At its heart is Liverpool, the home of the United Kingdom’s first commercial dry dock. Under this directive, Liverpool’s communities, which are already among the most deprived in Europe, will witness hard-grafting dockers being put out of work. All this with a compensation package on the table insufficient to comply with United Kingdom law, let alone the European Convention on Human Rights. It is neither desirable nor practical for this House to try to amend this proposal, which is fundamentally flawed. It is for all these reasons that we must vote this proposal down."@en1
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