A EURO-MP has spoken out in the European Parliament against a "deceptive" guide which left a North Yorkshire hairdresser facing a bill of almost £1,800.

Richard Corbett, a Labour member for Yorkshire and the Humber, branded the European City Guide and similar documents a "pan-European scam", which he claimed "amount to a conspiracy to defraud the citizens of Europe".

His comments come only a few weeks after Tadcaster hairdresser Paula Marr, pictured, revealed how she filled in what she thought was a survey form - and ended up with a whopping bill for almost £1,800.

Paula, owner of Genesis Hair Design, in Tadcaster, said she wanted to tell her story in the Evening Press to warn other businesses of the consequences if they had anything to do with the Valencia-based European City Guide.

She said the organisation said it was compiling commercial information, and filling in the form would give her the opportunity to be published in its "inter-professional Guide" on CD Rom. The form said: "The updating is cost-free."

Paula said she made the mistake of opening her post at the end of a busy day, and consequently filled in the form, signed it and returned it, without spotting in small print at the bottom of the page that she would be contracted to pay 937 euros for each of three editions of the guide.

After receiving an invoice for the first 937 euros, she wrote back, saying she had thought she had responded to a simple survey, and did not want to be in the guide.

Mr Corbett, who has campaigned on the issue for some time, said in the Strasbourg Parliament that the best known "scam" targeting small businesses was the European City Guide from Spain, but there were others as well.

"They all mail deliberately deceptive documents to small businesses across Europe," he said.

"These are disguised as free 'update forms', but hidden in the small print is a notice that signing the form will incur huge costs."

He said a newspaper had recently revealed that many of the scams were owned by one man, who also owned and controlled the debt collection companies that pursued victims once they had been duped into signing.

"His network amounts to a conspiracy to defraud the citizens of Europe," Mr Corbett claimed.

"These cross-border scams hop from country to country, taking advantage of our divergent legal systems to escape justice."

He said he was delighted that the European Commissioner for Consumer Affairs had agreed to look into the matter.

Updated: 09:44 Wednesday, April 05, 2006