TONY BLAIR has spoken out about the continuing loss of York chocolate jobs - and dismissed claims that French-style legislation is needed to protect employment.

The Prime Minister was quizzed by the Evening Press during a visit to York which came:

Only weeks after Nestl Rowntree shed more than 200 permanent jobs

Less than a year after York's other chocolate factory, Terry's, shut down with the loss of more than 300 jobs.

In the latter case, production of famous confectionery such as Chocolate Orange and All Gold has been transferred to factories on the Continent, where either labour is cheaper or the technology is better.

Union leader John Kirk, who represents many of the workers made redundant at both Terry's and Nestl, called recently on the Government to take action to protect British manufacturing employment. He said Britain should follow the lead set by other European countries, such as France, and make it much more difficult for companies to make people redundant, and to close factories down and move work abroad.

The Evening Press put such demands to the Prime Minister when he visited the University of York on Friday to open the National Science Learning Centre.

But he was dismissive, saying: "What is the French unemployment rate? It's over double what ours is. We have introduced certain protections, we have given people the right to be a member of a trade union, but it is a bit of a false hope that you can legislate for a changing world market.

"I think the only thing that you can do is to say in today's economy there will be big changes, but we have got to keep a stable economy where we are generating new jobs the whole time.

"In today's market, jobs come and go in different sectors and we have to prepare our workforce for that."

Asked how he reacted when he heard the Terry's factory was closing, he said there had been "an emotional as well as a jobs issue there".

He said: "All I know is that what we do now is we put a very big amount of support and help in for people to get new jobs and that is the best we can do.

"The way forward for employment is on the basis of a well-educated workforce. There is no way round that."

Updated: 11:24 Monday, March 20, 2006