Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-17-Speech-2-049"
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"en.20060117.5.2-049"2
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"Mr President, when the European Parliament threw out the proposed port services directive two years ago no one believed that the Commission would try to bring it back. Yet it did not consult, it would not listen and it decided to ignore this democratic parliament.
Let us be very clear about the damage that this law, if adopted, would inflict on ports, including the east coast ports which I represent in this Parliament. Replacing highly skilled, trained staff with ships’ crew able to load and unload is a recipe for accidents, injury and, possibly, deaths. Compare that with the port of Tilbury, which achieved a 50% reduction in accidents in 2005, or Great Yarmouth, which has seen no reportable accidents for two years.
I want to say to Mr Jarzembowski that this law would be devastating for jobs. Port owners tell me that over 600 new jobs at Felixstowe and over 750 new jobs at Harwich would all be threatened. Not one of 650 jobs at the port of Tilbury would be safe. That is what the port owners say themselves and these port owners would see their incentive for vital new investments destroyed.
Already two new investment projects at Tilbury have been put on hold because of the uncertainty created by this directive. Port expansion at Bathside Bay, so recently approved at Harwich, and the positive decision we very much hope for this week for the Felixstowe South expansion, are both in jeopardy.
I would say to the UK Independence Party, that represents GBP 1 billion of expenditure, if you check your figures; and we would not even have to be here now but for the fact that your members voted for this legislation in the Committee on Transport and Tourism.
On investment again, in Great Yarmouth a campaign for more than a decade to build an outer harbour would see this put in competition with the existing inner harbour, substituting existing jobs rather than expanding jobs and services in an area recognised as a priority to tackle unemployment in the whole of the European Union.
Make no mistake, it is skilled dock workers who would suffer most – people like Steven Drew from Yarmouth, sitting in the Public Gallery listening to this debate, who, together with his father Frank before him, have given 55 years’ combined service to the ports industry.
Competition is needed between ports, not within them. The European Union should now do what it should have done before: consult ports, trade unions and shipping lines from scratch, starting with a blank sheet of paper, and on this proposal it should admit defeat. This European Parliament, having sought to reject this proposal once and for all, should now vote ‘no’ for a second time and never again."@en1
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