Mote affair highlights an absurd situation

One welcome result of former UKIP MEP Ashley Mote's stint in jail for multiple benefit fraud, could be a change to the law that has allowed him to be paid as an MEP despite being unable to carry out his function as an elected representative. The Leader of the House of Commons, Harriet Harman, who is responsible for the payment of MPs and MEPs, is now in the process of reviewing the legislation.

The law was introduced back in 1981 after IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands was elected to the Commons despite being in prison, to stop others from doing the same. It disqualifies anyone from being an MP if they are facing a prison sentence of more than a year. These were somewhat exceptional circumstances - I don't think that the then Tory government thought that the law would lead to the farcical situation whereby a politician continues to receive his taxpayer-funded salary, while in jail at the expense of the taxpayer and all for defrauding the taxpayer in the first place. It is outrageous that politicians can continue to be paid when they are in prison for defrauding their electorate and, self-evidently, cannot represent their constituents.

There will be some who say that Mr Mote never did much work when has was allowed to attend Parliament sessions - we shall see what happens when he returns to Brussels in the New Year.

It was no surprise to see ex-UKIP MEP Ashley Mote jailed after being found guilty of benefit fraud, but his nine-month sentence means that, under UK law, he is able to continue as a Member of the European Parliament.

Mote then, has left us in the ridiculous situation in which he has been found guilty of fraudulently obtaining taxpayers’ money, yet will continue to receive his taxpayers’ funded salary while being incarcerated at the expense of the taxpayer.

I have therefore written to House of Commons authorities, as they are responsible for the payment of MPs and MEPs salaries, asking that Mote’s salary be witheld for the duration of his sentence.

Mote was the ultimate hypocrite, as he frequently made unsubstantiated claims about fraud in the EU, while he himself turned out to be a fraudster.

The Guardian’s diary writer Hugh Muir makes a pertinent point when noting that while Ashley Mote cannot attend his committee (Budgetary Control) one of his neo-fascist colleagues in the Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty Group can sit in on his behalf!

I’m sure the voters of the south east didn’t envisage that when they voted UKIP three years ago.

At the risk of sounding like Richard Littlejohn, you couldn’t make it up.

UKIP are busy trying to distance themselves from Ashley Mote, found guilty last week of several fraud charges relating to false benefit claims he made before he became an MEP.

Mote was elected as a UKIP MEP. Indeed, he was their top candidate in the South East. Did they really not check his character and financial background before they selected him to represent the party in the European elections? Of course, when the news came out that he was facing so many criminal charges, UKIP kicked him out of the party (though they have not done this yet to their MEP Tom Wise following the allegations against him of financial irregularities over the use of office funds - if they do, they will have lost a quarter of the MEPs elected as UKIP in 2004!).

Ashley Mote has now joined the far-right neo-fascist "Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty" group, which gives you an idea of the type of political views UKIP seems to attract.

Ironically, Mote spent most of his time as an MEP making allegations about the EU accounts. Now it is he who has been found guilty of eight counts of false accounting. The other crimes Mote was found guilty of include eight charges of obtaining a money transfer by deception, four charges of evading liability and one charge of failing to notify of a change of circumstances.

So, after three years of trying to dodge the Crown Prosecution Service by spuriously claiming immunity as an MEP, Ashley Mote finally appeared in court to face charges of multiple benefit fraud.

It was disappointing to see that elements of the press chose to cover the story without mentioning that Mote was elected as UKIP and spends most of his time hypocritically denouncing the EU as corrupt. Instead, Eurosceptic newspapers turned a story about an opponent of the EU into an anti-EU story, with headlines such as "£70,000 MEP con" and "MEP fleeces taxpayers", trying to use Mote's behaviour to bring all MEPs into disrepute.

(Incidentally, Mote is not the only MEP elected on the UKIP ticket to face investigation for misappropriation of public money. His former UKIP colleague Tom Wise is under investigation for allegedly misappropriating public monies.)

At the start of this year, Mr Mote was one of the founding members of the neo-fascist Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty group in the European Parliament (which unites Mussolini's granddaughter and Jean Marie Le Pen's National Front). Mr Mote's brass neck also extended to giving 'evidence' to a House of Lords enquiry into the EU's financial management in 2006.

Let's hope that Mr Mote's case is swiftly resolved and that other MEPs are not tarred by his brush.

It is sometimes striking, how blissfully ignorant some Eurosceptics are even of basic facts about the Union that they seek so assiduously to denigrate.

In the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs committee last week, Ashley Mote (elected as UKIP and now a member of Mr Le Pen's far-right group) questioned Commissioner Wallstrom on "what majority is needed to ratify the new Reform Treaty?"!

Even Sixth Formers would usually know that any new treaty must be ratified by all member states to come into force. But someone who has been an MEP for three years should surely have some grasp of the basics!

Having been a political campaigner all my life, I know by now that the far right are always a constant presence, bubbling away just underneath the surface of civilised society, waiting for an opportunity to pop up and spread their malicious politics.

Sad to say, an opportunity has arisen, in part, because of UKIP's breakthrough at the last European election.

The French Front Nationale (including Le Pen), Alessandra Mussolini (definitely her Grandfather’s Granddaughter), the Belgian Vlaams Blok, the Greater Romania Party, and Ashley Mote (elected as UKIP) have joined together to try to form a far-right political group in the European Parliament - the smallest of what will now be 8 party groups. A minimum of 20 members is required to form a Group. As things stand, they look as though they may just reach 20. In other words, it would not have been possible without Mote and UKIP's breakthrough in the last European elections.

Just as British MPs are entitled to question Government ministers, MEPs have the right to question representatives from the Council and the Commission, either in writing or on the floor of Parliament. This is one of the ways in which the European Parliament holds the other institutions to account.

The nature of these questions can vary. Some are straightforwardly factual, asking for particular information. Others challenge ministers or Commissioners over their actions or intentions. Still others are there to make a political point, which can be particularly effective now that anyone can check up on their MEPs’ activities via the Europarl website.

As one might imagine in a Parliament which contains MEPs from every shade of the political spectrum, there are some members whose questions are not always, shall we say, entirely germane. But what’s even stranger is that one such individual, a certain Ashley Mote MEP, has acquired the bizarre habit of copying all his submissions to the entire Parliament via e-mail. I should explain: the e-mail system we have here in Parliament makes it easy for us to e-mail a single colleague or a group, but when it comes to writing to every single MEP in the building, most members exercise a degree of common-sense and are able to restrain themselves from flooding the system.

Not, sadly, Mr Mote. When he feels the need to expound his particular political agenda, hundreds of copies of his missives go whizzing through the ether into the inboxes of every MEP in the building. Most are swiftly transferred to wastebaskets, but of course the Commission or Council staff who receive the actual questions don’t have that option: instead, they have to spend time translating the questions into various languages, forwarding them to the relevant officials, researching responses and publishing the answers. When the questions involve holding the Commission to account, this is money well spent; but when they are nothing but childish timewasting or political points-scoring, this amounts to a spectacular abuse of taxpayers’ money.

Occasionally, someone takes the time to reply to Mr Mote and raises a chuckle with the rest of us. This actually happened twice last week. Charles Tannock, a Tory psychiatrist-turned-politician from London, responded to a Mote classic with the following:

Why are you wasting valuable time of Council officials (and therefore EU taxpayers money which includes the UK!) in translating and having to answer such ridiculous and purposeless PQs.

How about spending more time in getting involved in a constructive but critical dialogue with other EU institutions which serves the interest of your constituents and the rest of humanity.

No reply was, sadly, forthcoming.

Then there was this delightfully tongue-in-cheek response from an SNP member:

Dear colleagues,

I do apologise for the mass nature of this e-mail, though I feel it only right that I bring a marvellous e-mail facility to your attention.

If you are aware of a persistent ‘spammer’ and are tired of your inbox clogging with meaningless nonsense, then you can set up an ‘e-mail rule’ to manage your inbox.

For example, if you receive an e-mail from an individual you are quite sure has little worthwhile to contribute and you feel safe to block their e-mails from evermore, then right click on that e-mail and take the ‘create rule’ option.

… Having been using it for some months, I can vouch for how effective it is. My own ‘list of doom’ extends to a mere 15 individuals yet the rubbish e-mails I get is drastically reduced.

Touché.