Bill Cash has said today (30 January):

“The Prime Minister said ‘British jobs for British workers’. He was right but he is doing nothing about seeking changes in European law to achieve this.

“When circumstances change, laws have to change with them. The idea of free movement internationally is subjected to restrictions all over the world. Restrictions are where vital national interests are involved but there are restrictions being imposed now on foreign nationals coming into the United Kingdom, except with regards to the European Union. Yet, the Government is calling for global action.

“It is not protectionism to insist that where there is a British workforce, which is willing and available to do the job of the right quality, they should be given the right to do those jobs. There are already riots taking place in Europe. The economic tension and sense of unfairness is growing all over Europe, in France, Italy, Greece, Iceland and Bulgaria. The problem of economic instability, caused by the failure of the European economic recovery plan, as I said in the House of Commons on 7th October and 20th January, is making worse the international economic crisis.

“Europe is in recession. Unemployment is horrendous and rising in most Member States, with business being overburdened by heavy regulation. The Lisbon agenda has not worked.

“What we need is economic flexibility through Europe, not a straitjacket and not laws that cannot be repealed because of doctrinaire ideological European policies. Economic and social instability is much worse for the people of Europe and the United Kingdom than a perverse insistence on European law-making. A failure not to tackle this now will simply play into the hands of the extremists.”