PIPE organ music will continue to sound from Worcester Cathedral after all.

The British Government raised fears that the music, which has sounded from the Cathedral pipes for years, would be barred under new European regulations.

However, a Euro MP, who helped draw up the EU directive, has insisted church organs are safe.

West Midlands MEP Philip Bushill-Matthews has blamed Whitehall bureaucrats for raising such fears in the first place. Past statements from the Government indicated that pipe organs would be subject to the new regulations from July 1 because they contain a lead alloy.

This would have threatened a centuries-old tradition of church music and put an end to the organ-making industry. A new organ ordered for Worcester Cathedral would have been illegal before it was built.

Mr Bushill-Matthews said: "The problem was that some bureaucrat in the British Government, in true British fashion, said `church organs contain lead, therefore they are banned'.

"No other country has raised this as an issue. They are all merrily playing their church organs," he said. He urged the British public not to blame MEPs for the organ scare.

"It's Yes Minister at work. The army of bureaucrats in Whitehall have to make work for themselves," he said. "It's outrageous people should be worried in this way."

He added that because the British Government had raised the question, the EU Commission now had to ask all 25 member-states whether they intended the legislation to cover pipe organs.

In the meantime the Government is asking for an exemption for church organs.

Trade and Industry Minister Malcolm Wicks, who does not believe pipe organs fall within the scope of the directive, said he hoped to "put an end to all this nonsense" at an important meeting in Brussels in the third week of June.

"I think very soon we'll all be singing from the same hymn sheet," he said.

The Church of England, which is backing the Institute of British Organ Building's campaign to exempt pipe organs, welcomed the minister's commitment.