Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-07-Speech-1-233"
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"en.20080707.22.1-233"2
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"Mr President, after our previous debate I am glad to see that we are still friends and that we can reach a wider consensus on these issues.
Just let me clarify a couple of points that have given rise to controversy. On parliamentary questions: we are not proposing any limit to parliamentary questions, we are simply saying that the same guidelines that we as a Parliament have already adopted for Question Time questions should apply to written questions, namely that they should be within the remit of the European Union and of the institution called upon to answer them.
Questions about hospitals in the UK under the National Health Service and the moving of staff from one hospital to another, which have nothing to do with the European Union, should not be parliamentary questions costing a lot of money at European level. This seems to me to be common sense: only UKIP and their friends can describe it as some sort of conspiracy or some sort of censorship. Censorship? On criteria that we ourselves decide, that our President is called upon to rule on, not the Commission or the Council? If that is censorship, then my goodness…
The second question that gave rise to some controversy was speaking time. Perhaps I did not explain this fully earlier. We will keep the two options that we have now for organising debates, and add a third one. At the moment we can have a full debate, which can already be a short debate with one speaker per political group. We also now have the option of the simplified procedure where the rapporteur simply makes a two-minute statement at the time of the vote: we will keep that.
What we are proposing is to add a third option: the short presentation, where the report is consensual and own-initiative, etc. and does not merit a full debate, though the latter always remains an option. Under the short presentation procedure, the rapporteur presents the conclusions of the committee, the Commission responds and everybody else if they wish can make an extra contribution in writing. That increases the number of options available to Parliament; it does not restrict the rights of any Members. It multiplies the flexibility with which we can deal with these issues, and again I commend it to the House.
Finally a couple of short questions. In response to Mr Rübig, the questions and answers are already on line. They are visible to all Members; perhaps we should make more use of this, but they are there, that is a tool that is available. To Mr Baringdorf I would say yes, the report does distinguish between different types of own-initiative report. The type of legislative initiative to which he was referring would not come under this simplified procedure that we are proposing: that would go through the normal procedures, as that particular type of legislative initiative merits. So we have catered for that.
As for the very strange remarks by Mr Batten from UKIP and his reference to the next European elections, we shall see. Yes, his party won as many seats as the Liberal Democrats in the last European elections in the UK, having outspent them, I think, by a factor of 10 – Mr Duff is nodding, so I suppose that is right. We will see how many millionaires he gets to contribute to his campaign this time; but I hope that this time there will be greater awareness, having seen their performance in the European Parliament over these last five years, of what it actually means when you elect somebody from UKIP to this place. And if the electorate is aware of that then I am sure they will not do so well in the next European elections."@en1
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