Elected representative have been denied privileged access to the House of Commons. Is censorship a factor? Index on Censorship reports
Parliament on 13 October agreed a motion withdrawing automatic access to Westminster for members of the European Parliament.
Commons leader Harriet Harman tabled the motion, which cited a “growing pressure on facilities” and the lack of similar arrangements for other elected British officials. According to Harman’s office, the decision was in response to an ongoing review by the Administration Committee.
On 1 July the committee sent a letter to Harman and Speaker John Bercow to “recommended that UK MEPs should no longer be entitled to photo identity passes.” the motion said.
A few weeks earlier, European parliamentary elections on 4 June resulted in the election of the first MEPs from the British National Party: Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons.
The withdrawal of photo identity passes applies to all 72 MEPs equally. The motion reversed resolutions of January 1989 relating to services and December 1991 relating to access for UK MEPs and former MPs. However, the BNP and a number of MEPs believe that the move is directly aimed at excluding the BNP from the Houses of Parliament.
“If the largest motive at Westminster was, as some have suggested, to avoid giving access to MEPs from the British National Party, then making all MEPs lose out is a regrettable trimming of our democracy in response to racists and fascists when we need a robust democratic riposte to them,” said Baroness Sarah Ludford, a Liberal Democrat MEP.
The BNP has said that the measure was designed to exclude its new MEPs from Westminster.
“The new rules have been brought in solely to deny Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons access to Westminster,” claimed Griffin’s communications officer, Martin Wingfield.
Conservative MEP Giles Chichester criticised the move, and suggested that it could be reversed by a Tory government.
“If they want to ban the BNP from Parliament they should just do so rather than trying to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut,” said Chichester. “It is a matter of regret that MEPs have had their parliamentary passes removed but we hope that following elections next year this situation can be looked at again.”
The broader issue of far-right MEPs has become a controversial matter for the Tories, who have aligned with the far-right bloc in the European Parliament. At their party conference in October, the Tories invited two allied Polish and Latvian MEPs from parties criticised as anti-semitic by Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
On a practical level, MEPs working closely with their counterparts in Westminster need to attend the Commons on an unrestricted basis, said Fiona Hall, a Liberal Democratic MEP.
“The move to deprive MEPs of a pass giving automatic access to Westminster would cause a great deal of inconvenience,” she said. “Even under the old rules, democratically elected MEPs find themselves far more curtailed in their movements around Westminster than lobbyists and journalists.”
The office of the Leader of the House did not elaborate on the withdrawal of 72 photo identity passes to MEPs was necessary due to “growing pressure on facilities”, but said it was an issue for the Administrative Committee.
When the access passes were first introduced in 1989, the Commons leader took a different perspective: “I believe that there really can be very little objection to an amendment which is so modest in scope,” said the Tory MP John Wakeham.
“It would, if approved, merely allow MEPs access to that part of the House to which members of the public also have access, except that their photo pass would entitle them to come in at St Stephen’s entrance without having to explain themselves to the police or undergoing a bag search and scan for explosives.”
Read Martin Wingfield’s article here
