Edward McMillan-Scott
| Edward McMillan-Scott | |
|---|---|
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| Member of the European Parliament for Yorkshire and the Humber |
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In office 14 June 1984 – 2 July 2014 |
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| Preceded by | Neil Balfour |
| Succeeded by | Amjad Bashir |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
15 August 1949 Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party |
Liberal Democrats (2010–present) Conservative Party (1967–2009) |
| Spouse(s) | Henrietta McMillan-Scott |
Liberal Democrats (2010–present)
Edward Hugh Christian McMillan-Scott (born 15 August 1949) is a British politician.
He was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Yorkshire and the Humber constituency. He was elected four times as European Parliament Vice-President, 2004–2014: his main portfolio was Human Rights and Democracy. He was first elected as an MEP in 1984. McMillan-Scott was a Conservative until his protest over the move of the Conservatives after the June 2009 European elections to a newly created, then moderately eurosceptic parliamentary group, the European Conservatives and Reformists; he lost the whip but was then expelled from the Conservatives without notice or explanation. He appealed but after sitting as an Independent MEP (non-attached) he joined the Liberal Democrats in March 2010. On 22 November 2014 he was voted a Patron of the UK's only pro-European membership organisation, the non-party European Movement at its London AGM.
McMillan-Scott was leader of the Conservative MEPs 1997–2001. He was re-elected top of the Yorkshire & Humber regional list in the 2009 election. McMillan-Scott is a lifelong pro-European. Following David Cameron's decision to withdraw the Conservative MEPs from the centrist European People's Party in order to form the European Conservative and Reformist's Group, McMillan-Scott objected. When the composition of Cameron's new ECR group was announced after the European elections of 2009, McMillan-Scott protested. The new group was described by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg as "a bunch of nutters, homophobes, anti-Semites and climate-change deniers". He successfully stood as an independent Vice-President against the nominee of the ECR Group, Polish MEP Michal Kaminski, criticising Kaminski's alleged past links to extremism, confirmed inter alia by the Daily Telegraph. He is the only Vice-President to have been elected without an official party candidature. As a result of this protest, he had the whip withdrawn and was subsequently expelled from the Conservative Party.
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