A NEW Euro-MP triggered a storm of protest over women's rights yesterday, within hours of starting work.

Investment fund manager Godfrey Bloom, from York, one of the UK Independence Party's new Euro-MPs, was given a place on the European Parliament's Women's Rights Committee on his first day in Strasbourg.

He told journalists he wanted to deal with women's issues because "I just don't think they clean behind the fridge enough".

If it was intended purely as a joke, the MEP raised no objections as reporters wrote down his remarks.

He went on: "I am here to represent Yorkshire women, who always have dinner on the table when you get home. I am going to promote men's rights."

Later, Mr Bloom went on television to expand on his views, saying: "The more women's rights you have, it's actually a bar to their employment.

"No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age.

''That isn't politically correct, is it? But it's a fact of life. I know, because I am a businessman."

The public utterances by UKIP on the need to take Britain out of the European Union were immediately forgotten as Mr Bloom's words spread like wildfire through the Strasbourg building.

Labour MEP Glenys Kinnock said: ''We know UKIP are Neanderthal in their attitudes, but it is absolutely terrifying that Mr Bloom can fly in the face of what we have worked and fought for, to establish equal opportunities and rights for women."