Three blatant examples of Eurosceptic lies came across my desk recently. Needless to say, no-one in the media picked up on the fact that they were lies and sadly many people will have taken them at face value.

First was an article by John Blundell in "The Business" who rants about European legislation "imposed on us by the Commission in Brussels. There was no Parliamentary scrutiny. There was no consultation. There was no discussion........." Either this man is painfully ill informed and cannot even be bothered to check basic facts before putting pen to paper, or he is deliberately deceptive. As I never cease having to point out, the European Commission does not adopt legislation: it proposes it to the elected European Parliament and the elected governments of the member states in the EU Council. They decide on it, and rarely adopt it without changes. There is always parliamentary scrutiny, both by the European Parliament and Westminster. Far from there being "no discussion" the examples he quotes are all discussed ad nauseum.

The second example is from a letter-writer to the Yorkshire Post who claims, in similar vein to Mr Blundell, that "MEPs are not allowed to vote to change any Commission decision". Same answer as above, but the prevalence of this false allegation in so many recent letters makes me think that it is a deliberate policy line of the europhobic organisations to ply this particular myth, sure in the knowledge that too few people understand the workings of the EU to be able to answer
them. And as Hitler advocated, tell a lie often enough and people will
believe it.

Third example was Thomas Wise, a UKIP MEP, who in the Parliament this week blamed the EU for changes to planning laws in English villages so that "we are now witnessing the erosion of the traditional communities and destruction of our landscape"! He goes on "you might ask who is responsible for this. Have a guess: the regional assemblies accountable directly to Brussels"!

Now, quite what the regional assembly may or may not said to influence local planning in his region, I don't know. But one thing I am quite sure of: regional assemblies are not "accountable directly to Brussels". How could they be? They are composed of elected local Councillors and other stakeholders in the region concerned. "Brussels", whoever that is, appoints no one to them. They have been established in the UK by UK authorities with a remit determined by the UK. They have nothing whatsoever to do with the European Union.

Yet this has not stopped anti-European campaigners repeating their allegations that these regions have been created by the European Union. The flimsy evidence they cite for this is that the European Parliamentary constituencies established by the House of Commons follow the same regional boundaries. Wow! So do Government Offices of various kinds. So do many private sector companies. This does not mean the EU created them. The EU has no jurisdiction on how member states organise themselves internally. It simply recognises whatever internal regions member states may or may not have.

The Eurosceptics here are trying to link Europe in peoples' minds with something they consider to be unpopular, namely regional assemblies. This is the same tactic that they have followed in trying to blame the EU for metrication, which is similarly not caused by the European Union. I hope readers and newspaper editors are not gullible enough to fall for it!