EP reform package adopted

I was pleased that the European Parliament adopted virtually all my proposals to reform the Parliament's internal procedures yesterday, by an overwhelming majority.

Much of it is pretty technical (how committees deal with amendments from other committees, and such like), but some is aimed at making EP debates more lively.

Traditionally EP debates are a succession of monologues of successive speakers in a predetermined order, without much interaction. I had already introduced a reform to set aside a period at the end of each debate for members to "catch-the-eye-of-the-speaker" for short spontaneous interventions, not pre-allocated, and providing an opportunity for responding to points made by others. Now, I have gone a stage further and provided for all speeches to be subject to brief interruptions for short questions, a bit like what happens in the House of Commons, with the consent of the speaker.

Traditionally, speaking time is shared out proportionately among political groups according to their size. Groups choose themselves whether to have, for example, two speakers for ten minutes each or twenty for one minute each. UKIP often do the latter - and then complain that they have had only one minute each!

In any case, this reform is a small step towards more flexibility and spontaneity in Parliament debates (which exists already in its committees, where the detailed legislative work is done). I was therefore astonished to hear the extreme eurosceptic Tories Heaton Harris and Hannan describe it as dictatorial and an attempt to silence minority opinion. Our MEP colleagues from Eastern Europe, who know a thing or two about dictatorships, were aghast at this suggestion.