East Midlands Euro-MP clears milk pinta confusion

12.00.00am GMT Thu 2nd Feb 2006

European Liberal Democrats are calling on the European Parliament's conservative and socialist groups, to which Tories and Labour belong, to join them in voting down the report which has caused such confusion about the future of the British pinta and loaf of bread.

East Midlands Liberal Democrat MEP Bill Newton Dunn says:

"The European Commission - the 'Brussels bureaucrats' - are the good guys in this saga. They proposed to slash red tape for almost all pre-packaged food products so as to allow whatever sizes of bottles and cartons which customers wanted to buy. The Commission proposal would not have affected British imperial sizes or resulted in a vanishing act of the British pinta and sliced bread."

Bill continued: "Instead, the proposed EU law would have increased the choice of products for British consumers. They will not be hoodwinked by new and different packaging. I think that we have to give the British consumer a bit more credit here - they are well capable of differentiating between metric and imperial sizes by simply looking at the labels."

"Conservative and Socialist Euro-MPs have created confusion. They opposed sensible deregulation and insisted on maintaining EU rules for more products including milk. Realising they got themselves in a mess, they are now calling for exceptions!"

"Despite all the rhetoric we hear from others, only the Liberal Democrats can be relied upon to consistently oppose unnecessary Euro-regulation. We should throw out these needless amendments and restrictions and support the Commission's original deregulation plan to end an antiquated system which obstructs free trade in the European Union."

Note:

In the Commission's proposal only four number of products would keep specified bottle or package sizes (wine, spirits, instant coffee and white sugar). Conservative and Socialist group MEPs voted to add butter, brown sugar, rice, pasta and drinking milk to that list, all of which the Liberal Democrats opposed.

The Commission proposal would allow the Pinta and British sliced bread to be continued to be sold as before.