I WISH to take issue with Greg Heathcliffe, who accuses me of making false claims against UKIP MEPs, citing the “MEP Rankings” website as evidence (Letters: 1st June).
On the contrary; having looked at this website myself, I can only conclude that it is Mr Heathcliffe who has grossly misinterpreted the data; when the total UK’s MEPs are actually sorted in order of their overall ranking score (i.e.
the higher the score, the more active they are as MEPs) then it can be demonstrated that more than 75 per cent of the UKIP MEPs are actually located around the bottom, and hence are amongst the least active.
William, Earl of Dartmouth, whom Mr Heathcliffe asserts is ‘consistently ranked high on the list’ and that he is ‘rated the third hardest-working MEP in the whole of Europe’ is, in reality, ranked as 39th out of 73 British MEPs on this website.
Nor are there ‘several other UKIP MEPs ranking in the top part of the list’; apart from 1 who is very active, and 4 (including William Dartmouth) hovering around the middle range, the remaining 18 UKIP MEPs are, as I’ve stated above, located in a block at the bottom of the list; on this website, Nigel Farage, for example, is ranked 2nd from the bottom.
However, it’s possible I may have implied too sweeping a statement in the past; it would appear that it’s not all UKIP MEPs who fail to fully participate in the European Parliament – just most of them!
(MS) LINDA NADOLNY, Secretary, Hants Branch, The European Movement (UK).
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