It’s not too late for action to help Paul and Andrea Hodgkinson

Of all the casework I have taken up as MEP, no single issue has been as long-running, as problematic or as intractable as that affecting a Derbyshire couple – Paul and Andrea Hodgkinson, and their plans to start a new life in Norway.

It’s a long story. The Hodgkinsons purchased property and land in Norway in 2006 from a Norwegian citizen. They planned to start their new life at Fyresdal, in the Telemark region, running their own organic Cashmere goat and tourism business including the use of Clydesdale horses.

But their dream has been shattered as a result of a long-running dispute over land ownership, and what I regard as the “disgraceful” behaviour of a Norwegian public authority.

Having bought the land, they erected the wooden fence poles necessary to keep the goats and horses in, but subsequently received a letter from the Statens Vegvesen, the equivalent of our Highways Agency, saying the fence posts were on publicly owned land and to remove them. Hundreds of posts were subsequently removed and smashed up.

However, I have seen documents proving that the sale of this vital strip of land was completed after it had already been sold to the Hodgkinsons, and approved in the Norwegian Land Register. Statens Vegvesen have also seen this evidence. The sale of the strip of land to them cannot be legal.

Paul & Andrea enlisted my support in October 2009, and, for well over two years I have been pursuing various avenues – more complicated because Norway is not a member of the EU – to try and help.

They have so far failed to get Statens Vegvesen to relinquish the land. Instead, this large, powerful, public authority has told the Hodgkinsons that they must take expensive legal advice to pursue the matter.

In an awful Catch-22 situation, the Norwegian Agricultural Authority is now forcing the sale of the property, saying the Hodgkinsons are not farming the land as originally agreed.

In addition to the Highway authority, I have written to a variety of Norwegian officials and MPs. I’ve met the Norwegian Mission to the EU, and Norwegian observers to the European Parliament. We’ve been trying to get the Norwegian media to take up the matter, and I’ve now written to the Prime Minister as a last resort to ask for his intervention.

Even now it’s not too late for action. There is a petition and much more information on the Hodgkinson’s website. Public pressure, whether from Norway or elsewhere, could still bring a resolution to this sad story.

East Midlands MEP calls for UK action on breast implants after European Commission Report

“If any woman is at risk then I believe she has the right to have her breast implant removed, and the private companies who caused the problem should pay for it,” said Glenis Willmott MEP this week.

The European Commission yesterday published all the evidence they have gathered on the risks of the faulty PIP implants, and recommended that all women who are worried should go and see their surgeons.  Commission scientists will continue their work, and the European Parliament will start revising the Medical Devices Directive this year with stricter provisions for authorising implants.

“The British Government should force the private companies to remove faulty implants at no cost,” said Glenis, who is Leader of the British Labour MEPs.

“Women all over the UK are suffering huge anxiety on this issue. There has been serious fraud here.
 
“The Commission is drawing up a list of measures that countries can follow under the current rules, and I welcome this.  
 
“Five countries have now recommended removal – France, Germany, the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Belgium.

“Belgium issued their advice after receiving the Commission’s report – but the UK Government still isn’t doing enough and is leaving thousands of women in limbo,”  she said.

Job losses at AstraZeneca show the desperate need for a clinical trials rethink

Not a day goes by without further job losses being reported, and the 7,300 posts cut by pharmaceutical giant Astrazeneca today is a tragic blow for the hardworking people they employ. But it’s not just those that lose their jobs who will be affected. Many of the cuts will be to the company’s research and development teams, which means less research into new, life-saving drugs.

We’re facing a crisis in antimicrobial resistance and desperately need new antibiotics. We need to find new ways to fight non-communicable killers such as cancer, diabetes and COPD, and life-threatening infectious diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis. But none of this will happen without new research.

The UK is traditionally a world leader in clinical research, but we’re losing out to trials undertaken in the emerging economies of Asia. We can never compete with their low prices, and we will never compromise on patient safety, but what we can do in the UK and the rest of Europe is provide high levels of expertise, efficiency and reliability.

Right now, though, we’re struggling. Clinical trials can be difficult and costly to carry out, and researchers often have to jump through unnecessary bureaucratic hoops. That’s why this year the European Parliament will be revising the Clinical Trials Directive to make sure that we can continue to be world leaders in finding new ways to treat diseases.

We also want to ensure the laws are the same across all EU countries to allow cross-border trials to be easily achievable. This is especially vital for rare diseases where there just aren’t enough patients in the UK to make a trial feasible. I’ve been working with children suffering from rare brain tumours who desperately need more clinical trials to be carried out in conjunction with our European partners.

It is also important that trials can be undertaken by numerous stakeholders working together. Whilst clinical trials are of course important for big pharmaceutical companies, it is vital that academics, professional bodies and the NHS can also sponsor or co-sponsor them. When the European Parliament starts work on this next year I will be making sure all these points are covered.

We need to make sure the UK can, with the rest of the EU, lead the way in medical research. Jobs in research and development should be being created, not cut. It’s not just about finding new ways to treat diseases, it’s about our economic health as well.

No to misleading claims on food

I want food labels to be simple and honest about what is inside them. This is not always as easy as it sounds, but today was a victory for consumers as the European Parliament supported my objection to a new nutrition claim on food labels. Manufacturers wanted to be able to state ‘now with x% less’ fat, saturates, sugar or salt, if they reduced these nutrients by 15% or more. But it had the potential to be very misleading, and I’m glad we have blocked it.

A number of nutrition claims are already allowed, including ‘reduced’, ‘light’, ‘low fat’ and ‘very low sodium’, to name a few. For health-conscious consumers it is already hard to know which product is the best for themselves and their family and allowing yet another claim would have confused people more. When faced with the choice between one packet of biscuits with ’15% less sugar’ and one with ‘reduced sugar’, most people would not know which of those has the least sugar, and might wrongly assume that because the first one is quantified it is the best. In fact, the sugar in the biscuits with the reduced claim has been cut by 30%.

Not only is it a bigger reduction, but that 30% has to be in comparison with a range of similar products. The big problem with the x% less claim is that it compares a product with itself. If you are trying to cut down on your salt intake and you see a bag of crisps with ‘reduced salt’, you know that packet would be the best choice for you. But a bag of crisps with ’15% less salt’ could actually still have the highest levels of salt on the supermarket shelf. This is simply misleading.

There are plenty of examples where this claim could be used to give pretty unhealthy foods a healthier image. There is a well known brand of chocolate spread which contains so much saturated fat that it could be reduced by 20% and still have more saturated fat than any other chocolate spread on the market.

It is for these reasons that I objected to the European Commission allowing this claim. Working together with colleagues from all political persuasions we managed to fight pressure from food manufacturers and national governments to get backing for our objection, first in the Parliament’s Environment and Health Committee, and then by an absolute majority of all MEPs.

Now we have voted against the claim the Commission will have to rethink their approach. Nutrition claims should be used to allow consumers to make healthier choices, if they want to, not as a marketing ploy to improve the image of an unhealthy product. Yes, we want to encourage manufacturers to reformulate their products to make them healthier, but it has to be meaningful, and not misleading.

It can be extremely difficult to fight the power of the food and drink industry in the interest of health and consumers, something I found out when I led for my political grouping of Socialists and Democrats on the Food Information Regulation. But it is our duty to ensure that people have transparent and honest information about what is in the food they buy, and today’s vote was another step towards that.