Glenys steps up

Amid the Cabinet reshuffle, we learn the Europe Minister Caroline Flint has resigned, after failing to be promoted to Health Secretary, a position which she has apparently been coveting.

Iain Dale has the full text of her resignation letter, in which she accuses Gordon Brown of running a 'two-tier Government', and laments her lack of invitations to Cabinet meetings, saying she has been "only invited once since October and not to a single political Cabinet - not even the one held a few weeks before the European elections."

Not to worry Caroline, maybe the Prime Minister just needed briefing on the Lisbon Treaty, and you're not exactly qualified for that.

And so we learn that the new Europe Minister is to be the serial junketeer Welsh MEP Glenys Kinnock, wife of former Labour leader and EU Commissioner Neil Kinnock.

Unable to find anyone currently serving in Parliament to fit the position, Brown will elevate Glenys Kinnock to the House of Lords to take over.

Our recent ranking of MEPs gives us some easy-access info on the new Europe Minister.

Glenys Kinnock at a glance:

In a vote in the European Parliament in February last year, Glenys voted against an amendment which asked that the European Parliament "undertake to respect the outcome of the referendum in Ireland" on the Lisbon Treaty.

She has also chosen to opt into the highly controversial and dubious second pension scheme (see here, here and here) and in 2005, Glenys Kinnock was among those MEPs that vetoed a proposal which would have ensured that MEPs' contributions to the second pension scheme could no longer be paid out of MEPs' allowances, but would have had to come out of their own pockets.

Glenys did not do particularly well in our recent ranking of MEPs, coming 65th out of the 78 UK MEPs. However, she was not present for 5 key votes which we used in our league table... probably off on a 'fact-finding' mission somewhere.

Glenys is the most well-travelled of all UK MEPs, clocking up almost 130,000 air miles over the past five years, enough to travel around the world five times. Some of these included 'fact-finding' missions to the Seychelles, and trips to the Caribbean in May this year.

Say what?

This is from yesterday's debate in the House of Commons on the Lisbon Treaty.

The Conservative MP for Bexleyheath and Crayford, David Evennett, asked Caroline Flint, Europe Minister:

"Can the Minister confirm categorically that any changes to the Lisbon treaty for any country would mean that the treaty needed to be re-ratified? Would the Government then hold a referendum on this matter?"

Great question - given the fact that the Irish government has promised in no uncertain terms not to put the same question to the Irish people, and yet in reality has no possible means of making any changes to it at all without triggering re-ratification in all the other EU member states - something it clearly has no intention of doing.

Caroline's answer?

"I think that it is dead if people vote against it."

What? If only! Apart from the fact that this clearly doesn't answer the question at all, it's a very strange response from someone who believes very strongly that a Treaty should not be dead if people vote against it - hence her enthusiastic support for its continuous reincarnation following three no votes.

Clueless II

During a debate on a different topic in the Commons yesterday our Europe Minister Caroline made a very bold claim indeed. She said:

"Over the past few years, we have seen some huge reductions in regulation in the European Union."

Can she - can anybody - back that up with any proof? Probably not, because the evidence would suggest that it simply isn't true.

Here at Open Europe we spent an arduous 6 months trawling painstakingly through more than 2,000 government impact assessments dating since 1998 to get a grip on the number of regulations, and the proportion and cost of those coming from the EU. We also took a long, hard look at the EU's so-called 'Better Regulation Agenda', and found that what small efforts had been made to scale back the mountains of existing legislation, these had been swamped by the tsunami of new regulations being introduced every year.

In fact, since the Commission launched its ‘Better Regulation Agenda’ in 2005, the annual cost of EU legislation across the bloc has gone from €108 billion to over €161 billion – an increase of 50%.

To add a couple of other relevant factoids:

- In 2008 alone the cost of regulation for the EU-27 was €269.5 billion. This is up from €229.6 billion in 2007 and €183.4 billion in 2006.

- Between 1995 and 2004 almost 11,000 new legal acts were added to the acquis communautaire.

- Overall, the cost of EU legislation has gone up steadily year-on-year over the past decade. In
2008 alone, EU legislation dating from 1998 cost the UK economy £18.5 billion – up from £12.2
billion in 2005.

These are figures which even the Commission's own Director for Better Regulation, Programming and Impact Assessment Marianne Klingbeil did not argue with at an event on this subject organised by Open Europe in Brussels this week.

So where on earth does Flint get the idea that there have been "huge" reductions in regulation?

In our report we make several proposals for reform, but this government has no chance of reducing the burden of regulation if it won't face up to the problem in the first place.

Clueless

Europe Minister Caroline Flint made a big mistake when she admitted in Parliament on Monday that she hadn't read all of the EU Lisbon Treaty. This is the woman who patronisingly told the Irish that they had voted 'no' because they misunderstood the Treaty.

We always suspected she didn't have the foggiest about the EU, especially after telling an audience at Leeds university that it was important to be in favour of European integration if you like pizza.

But this new revelation is something else.

When the Government went back on its promise to hold a referendum on the Treaty last year, it argued over and over that 'politicians know best' on the big issues like EU treaty change.

Caroline Flint's ignorance, and her ability to admit that she hadn't even believed it necessary to read - let alone understand - crucial bits of the Lisbon Treaty , shows that this argument is well and truly defunct. This Government needs to get a grip and give the people the say they were promised on this thing - before it's too late.

Caroline loves the EU’s “common sense”

In slightly less important news, the European Parliament has also voted to 'allow' Britain to keep its imperial measures and abandoned its battle to standardise metric measurements. UK Europe Minister Caroline Flint got straight in there and declared it a “victory for common sense”.

We wonder what she'll make of the EP's other momentous decision today? Another victory? Or maybe an admission the European Parliament is shockingly out of touch… who knows.

Maybe Caroline will declare there is no "common sense" in preventing workers from adapting their working hours as they see fit.

Or maybe she'll just go on drinking the European Parliament's kool-aid.