The UK oil and gas sector has escaped 'dangerous' European safety rules that could have threatened industry standards, according to Conservative MEP Vicky Ford.

Mrs Ford said her 350 amendments to the EU draft law on offshore safety has changed the text line by line so that it now closely mirrors the UK standards.

And now the amended regulations have cleared their final legislative hurdle after MEPs approved them at a plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

It comes after North Sea oil and gas companies said the European draft legislation would make the industry less safe and would cost over £140m in legal and administration fees to enforce.

She said: 'Offshore safety in the North Sea is far from the tick-box culture which led to the BP disaster in America. The EU Commission proposals would have made the industry more dangerous and every safety manual on every oil rig would have had to be torn up and re-written.