The clock begins ticking today for hundreds of threatened jobs in the South as a powerful European committee starts discussions on a controversial directive to ban high-tar cigarettes. Daily Echo reporter Steve Rigley looks at the implications...

"INTERNATIONAL trade is vital for this country. Our past success was built on it.

"Millions of new jobs depend on it. Our continued prosperity relies on our continued success in exporting goods and services."

Prime Minister Tony Blair said those words in his introduction to Building British business overseas by British Trade Inter-national.

British American Tobacco has been operating in Southampton since 1913 and has been at its current Millbrook plant since 1926.

The 26-acre plant boasts one of the most modern manufacturing facilities in the world, after a £300 million investment during the 1990s.

As well as employing 1,040 full-time members of staff and 160 temporary or contract on-site workers, a further 7,000 people and 991 businesses rely on the plant for revenue.

In some cases these are small shops which sell workers a morning paper or the local pub that supplies a pint and a sandwich to a factory member enjoying a break at the end of a shift.

All this could be threatened by a controversial EU directive, which critics say makes a mockery of the Prime Minister's words.

Today the conciliation committee of the European Council, Parliament and Commission, will meet to finalise the legislation that bans EU factories from manufacturing cigarettes containing more than 10mg of tar.

The committee has up to six weeks to agree the text of the directive and then the European Parliament has another six weeks to vote on it.

Management and unions at the Southampton plant are against the move, which will mean moving the production of stronger cigarettes abroad. They have been joined by several leading politicians, including Hampshire MEP Roy Perry and Romsey MP Sandra Gidley.

Business leaders are also battling to keep the plant open.

Michael Heath, director general of Southampton and Fareham Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said: "It is estimated that the city's BAT operations place more than £70 million a year in the Southampton local economy, not to mention the benefits to companies in other areas and related industries.

"As a chamber, we support BAT in its efforts to prevent a regulation, the direct result of which would be to put thousands of local jobs and dozens of Southampton businesses at some considerable risk."

If the controversial European directive becomes law the knock-on effect will be felt across Hampshire.

Winchester-based Dickenson Legg Limited makes equipment for processing tobacco. It employs 250 people.

Tom Temple, chairman and chief executive, said: "The European ruling is absolutely nuts. It's just exporting jobs, it will export jobs from us.

"We are a big supplier to BAT which is just on our doorstep and any investment will hit us.

"The ruling would affect us adversely. I can't put a figure on job losses, but it would have a detrimental effect without a shadow of a doubt."

In Portsmouth, 140 people work for Field Packaging, which supplies a range of products used by BAT. These include boxes and cartons for cigarettes.

Bill Brindle, divisional sales and marketing director, said: "The restrictions on manufacture for export included in this directive will not achieve their objectives in respect of public health in destination markets. Instead they will destroy the level playing field for UK and European manufacturers and lead to plant closures and the export of jobs to outside of the EU."

He added: "We should be proud of the industry instead of trying to kill it, but it's politically expedient to harm the industry.

"That is no consolation to people who have their jobs on the line."