How hard do our Welsh MEPs work?

Guto Thomas
Political Correspondent

Euro MPs question whether the research really reflects their work

How hard any of our elected representatives works is extremely difficult to measure, and provokes even the most modest politicians to become defensive about their own performance.

But undeterred by the methodological challenges, researchers at the Institute for Public Policy in Bucharest have used official statistics from the European Parliament, to draw up a league table, based on how frequently all 785 MEPs turn up for plenary meetings.

This research suggests that all four of the Welsh MEPs are in the bottom third of performers across the European Union - a conclusion that the MEPs in turn say is an unfair and flawed way of looking at the way they actually work.

League tables always look quite impressive and authoritative at first - after all, hard facts and figures always seem as if they're speaking for themselves.

It's not the most important part of our work, and a lot of the time we're in Wales as well, doing our work there with constituents Jill Evans MEP, Plaid Cymru

But Labour's Eluned Morgan, who has an attendance rate of 69.39% (leaving her in joint 660th position) since the research began in September, insists that an assessment of this kind fails to understand how the European Parliament actually works.

"Anybody who understands the European Parliament understands that the real power and influence you have is in committee work and I've spent a lot of time this year really championing the energy portfolio in the European Parliament."

Showpiece

In addition to her duties in plenary sessions, Eluned Morgan is also a member of two parliamentary committees, and is a substitute on a further two - which suggests that she has more core committee responsibilities than any other Welsh MEPs.

"It's not fair to say that this is where the work is done - the plenary session is to a very large extent a showpiece," she added.

Plaid Cymru's Jill Evans has so far scored the highest attendance rate of 79.59% (joint 532nd), but she shares similar concerns about the research - indeed she has doubts about the actual facts and methodology used as a basis for the whole league table - and agrees that most of the work goes on away from the sparsely populated plenary sessions.

"By that point most of the work has been done, all of the debates have taken place in the committees so it is important that we're there. But it's not the most important part of our work and a lot of the time we're in Wales as well doing our work there with constituents."

International roles

Welsh Conservative MEP Jonathan Evans and Labour's Glenys Kinnock have both scored an attendance of 76% (joint 565th position) - despite having prominent roles representing the Parliament on the international stage and relations with both the United States and African and Caribbean nations.

However, this rolling research also keeps a tally of how many questions each MEP has asked, how many speeches they have made, as well as how many other types of parliamentary work they've been involved in during the same period.

These other methods of assessing the performance of our MEPs suggests that Glenys Kinnock may be the hardest working Welsh MEP - by asking more questions than the other three MEPs combined, making significantly more speeches, and presenting more reports and resolutions than any of her Welsh colleagues.

But whether any aspect of this league table provides a fair image of our MEPs is a more than valid question, with a feeling within the European Parliament that they often punch above their small collective weight.

Persuading the public back home of that, however, may be another matter.