The text of my letter published in the hertsad.co.uk this week: Sir, I do not wish to intrude upon the private grief that is the Ukip and Green Parties arguing over the relative merits of 4th and 5th place finishes in the recent county council elections in St Albans. But I cannot allow your Ukip correspondent to get away with repeating the myth that 75% of UK laws originate from the EU. It is a common Ukip tactic to invent or distort a fact or figure and to keep repeating it in the hope that people will eventually come to believe it. Thus readers may recall the ludicrous claim during the election campaign that 27 million Bulgarians and Romanians will soon be coming to Britain despite the fact that the combined population of the two countries is – 27 million! The 75% claim comes from the same locker. The politically-neutral House of Commons library actually did some extensive research on this issue in 2010, which suggested that the percentage of secondary legislation in the UK that resulted from EU requirements fluctuated between 8 and 10 per cent over the previous decade. As a candidate for the European elections next year however I am less interested in the number of laws coming from the EU and more interested in whether those laws are good or bad and whether they promote the freedom and wellbeing of its citizens. Ukip evidently has a different idea which is why Ukip MEPs opposed reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, voted against greater co-operation of EU police forces to catch people traffickers and refused to support lower mobile phone roaming charges across the EU. That is why a recent survey named UK Lib Dem MEPs as the hardest working of any political grouping in the European Parliament. And the laziest? You guessed it – Ukip.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 23:58:57 +0000
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