Unruly MEPs deserve their fines

Parliament's President (Speaker) has this week fined the MEPs who took part in the attempt to drown out the Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates in December.

Yorkshire’s very own Godfrey Bloom is in the hall of shame, though he may well not realise this yet as he wasn’t present for the parliament sitting when Hans Gert Pottering explained the reasons behind the punishments.

That’s a pity because Pottering’s explanation of exactly why Bloom and some others were punished made it quite clear that it was not their views that were the problem (as they claim) - they were in trouble for stopping others (notably the Portuguese Prime Minister) – from expressing their views with their hollering and howling.

Of course Dan Hannan has failed to note this in his demagogic Telegraph blog, as his crusade to convince the world that the European Parliament is "despotic" continues. He points out that other protests have been allowed to go on in the parliament, which is quite true but they made no attempt to disrupt parliamentary proceedings and prevent those with a different view from speaking. Similarly, in this protest, MEPs who merely waved banners have not been reprimanded (Hannan was one). The fines were imposed on those who aggressed ushers or who continued to disrupt the proceedings after being called to order by the Speaker.

Hannan well knows that the sort of behaviour he readily condones would have ended in far more rigourous disciplinary proceedings and suspension had it taken place in the Commons, but the guilty MEPs escape such punishment. Their rights to speak in debates and to vote remain intact and they have simply been fined.

Plenty of MPs have had their right to vote and speak suspended for far less in the Commons. There are myriad examples, a fair number involving Denis Skinner, who has been suspended for simply complaining that Deputy Speaker Sir Alan Haselhurst was being lenient to Theresa May because she was a Conservative. Another MP who was recently suspended was of course Lib Dem frontbencher Ed Davey, who earned a short ban after making excessive points of order during the treaty debate. Despite the frequency of these suspensions I have yet to see Hannan rally against "the despotism of the Commons."

The point is, that all parliaments have rules of procedure and when these rules are broken the people responsible face punishment and in this case, vociferously booing and heckling a speaker on the floor of the parliament, and continuing to do so when called to order by the Speaker, is clearly un-parliamentary behaviour.

You can read Pottering's explanation of the punishments in full here.