Published on Liberal Democrat Voice By Stuart Bonar | Mon 28th July 2014 – 10:54 am

Liberal Democrat MEP Catherine Bearder works harder than nine UKIP MEPs put together. She speaks more sense than their entire delegation, of course, but in terms of turning up to vote, it’s official: the number of European Parliament divisions she’s taken part in since the election is more than the combined total of nine of their lot.

Since the new Parliament started at the beginning of July, MEPs have faced 39 roll-call votes in the plenary. This is where all MEPs come together to speak and vote, usually in Strasbourg. Catherine, our sole representative in the European Parliament, has voted on all 39 occasions. She has a perfect 100 per cent record.

Contrast that with UKIP. Amongst their MEPs, Louise Bours, Nigel Farage, Raymond Finch, Nathan Gill, and Paul Nuttall have each voted five times, Mike Hookem four times, Jane Collins three times, with William Dartmouth and Jill Seymour registering no votes at all, not even against Lithuania adopting the euro. That’s nine MEPs who, between them, have voted just 32 times, seven fewer than Catherine has clocked up on her own. All voting information here is taken from VoteWatch.eu.

The records of all 24 UKIP MEPs show us that since the election they have, collectively, missed a combined total of 335 European Parliament votes. That’s excellent news for pro-Europeans: 335 opportunities for UKIP to express its hard Eurosceptic position have been squandered. Good.

Their performance gets even shakier when you look at some of the MEPs to whom UKIP have handed policy portfolios. Take their MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, Jane Collins. She now speaks for the party onemployment, but earlier this month she missed 17 votes in the European Parliament on youth unemployment. Her colleague for the same region, Mike Hookem, has just been given the defence brief, yet missed seven parliamentary votes on Ukraine.

In the first Nick v Nigel debate, Farage said, “But, Nick, the rules change every week… yet another small chunk, albeit small, and it’s incremental, yet another small chunk of our ability to govern our country goes to the institutions of Brussels.”

So, how have the parliamentary foot soldiers of the self-proclaimed People’s Army fought against this relentless Brussels onslaught? Take just one example: the resolution on youth unemployment, mentioned above. This resolution, passed by the European Parliament, calls for common, EU-wide minimum standards for apprenticeships and for increases in EU spending on employment programmes. This is precisely the kind of incremental accumulation of power (as Farage would see it) that he was warning about.

Yet, where were his MEPs when it came to voting this through or voting it down? Where was Farage himself? The record shows that nine UKIP MEPs, including Farage, did not take part in the vote.

With the British media now having forgotten that the European Parliament exists, all this will go unreported. That doesn’t mean however that they can’t make the news. In an act of wantonly obnoxious rudeness, typical of the British right-winger coming face-to-face with Johnny Foreigner, UKIP’s MEPs childishly and theatricallyturned their backs on an orchestra playing the European Anthem at the opening of the newly-elected Parliament.

Their antics are an embarrassment, and when we think about the superb Liberal Democrat MEPs who were defeated in May – in the case of Sir Graham Watson by just 0.4 per cent of the vote – it can be hard to stomach. Let us be thankful however for small mercies. We are lucky to have the anti-European opponents that we do. I would far rather have this ineffectual bunch more interested in childish theatrics than exerting influence. Their collective indolence is a blessing for pro-Europeans. Just think of what damage they could do if each of them worked as hard as our own Catherine Bearder.

* Stuart Bonar is a member of Plymouth Liberal Democrats.