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		Letter to the Editor Nottinghamshire Evening Post - Wednesday, 15th November 2006 Dear Sir, Mr. Gretton bangs on about all the environmental good he says the EU is doing (Letters, Nov 13th). Of course, like most jurisdictions in the Western world, the EU over the last thirty years has introduced a great deal of environmental law. Some of it is perfectly good, and has given us (for example) cleaner beaches. Some of it has been disastrous, and given us fridge mountains, and increased fly-tipping, and will soon give us TV and video mountains and a huge increase in cars dumped and torched in the countryside. The point is, we have given up our right to make environmental laws to Brussels. If we had not done so, we could still have had the cleaner beaches, and we wouldn't have created the disasters over fridge mountains. He asks why I don't complain about "gold plating"' of EU directives by Whitehall. But I do, repeatedly. I visit many companies in the East Midlands, and very often their first question is "Why do we get all this oppressive EU regulation?", but the second question is usually "And why do we gold-plate it and implement it far more rigorously than other EU states?". This has been a problem (let's be honest) under both Labour and Conservative administrations, and yes, it is time we got a grip on Whitehall. But consider this, Mr, Gretton: if we didn't have EU regulations, we wouldn't be able to gold-plate them. Let's have our law made in Westminster -- not made in Brussels and then gold-plated in Whitehall. Roger Helmer Conservative MEP for Nottinghamshire