Mr President, it is interesting to see that none of our British Conservative colleagues are here today to support their record on liberalisation in such areas as the railways. A recent UK parliamentary report on water privatisation has shown that many poorer people, such as pensioners, have had such difficulty in meeting their bills that they have been cutting their water use to a bare minimum. In some cases this has been described as verging on a public health crisis.

The drive for privatisation has also been part of a drive to reduce costs in the public sector and this has often resulted in wage squeezes that have hit the lowest paid. The tab for that is still picked up by the public purse through effectively subsidising wages in that area. Those people may be on a minimum wage, but it is not necessarily a liveable wage. That is not to say that everything in the public sector has been perfect, but in our view a lot of the claims made for liberalisation in this report are highly questionable.

My Group does not believe that general-interest services can be treated in the same way as companies which produce, for example, plastic key rings. It is not an area that should be subject to general competition policy and we have tabled amendments to that effect. We believe that competition rules need to give way to general-interest services, and not the reverse. We agree entirely with the Commission on the need for legal clarity. That is an issue we have often raised in connection with GATS and is the subject of an amendment we have tabled and for which we hope to win support.

Jean Lambert