Tories' European priorities "All Wrong"

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Thu 22nd Jan 2004

London's Liberal Democrat Euro-MP Baroness Sarah Ludford, has criticised Conservative MEPs for their peculiar sense of priorities for European action.

This week in the European Parliament, a London Conservative MEP Charles Tannock on the one hand opposed EU moves to safeguard the fundamental rights of British and other European prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, but on the other hand asked the EU to dictate the rota for rubbish collection in a London borough!

Sarah Ludford said:

"Tory hypocrisy in bleating on about 'Brussels interfering in our everyday lives' while asking for European action on purely local matters loses them any credibility they still clung on to."

"It is deplorable that Conservative MEPs waste time and taxpayers' money on trying to get Europe involved in their silly political games. They are bringing the EU and the Parliament into disrepute."

"And meanwhile Charles Tannock wants the EU to stand by while our citizens are incarcerated for the last 2 years without any charge in Guantanamo Bay. He has his priorities completely twisted."

"In any case he and his colleague John Bowis have got it wrong. Not only did Sutton residents re-elect the Liberal Democrats and reject the Conservatives by a massive majority (43 to 8) but a recent Mori poll found that 4 in 5 residents were happy with Sutton's refuse collection."

Charles Tannock and John Bowis backed a 2001 petition to the European Parliament calling on the EU institutions to tell the LibDem-controlled London borough of Sutton how to run its rubbish services! It was only considered in the EP Petitions Committee in January 2004, with huge waste of officials' and MEPs' time, use of paper for printing etc. The committee sensibly closed the file with no action.