It was just another dull day at the office. Only in this case the office' was the European Parliament in Strasbourg, and I hadn't got the slightest excuse for being bored.

I blame the way in which Euro-MPs vote. It is very different to the House of Commons.

Down at Westminster the usual voting practice for MPs is to troop through the lobbies. The Speaker calls "Ayes to the right, Noes to the left." And that is exactly what you do. The process takes a quarter of an hour, but you can have a chat to your colleagues while you're doing it and, usually, you only have to do it once each day.

All the votes that matter are strictly controlled. It's all part of the flawed fabric of British parliamentary democracy in which, as one minister said recently, "the Opposition can have its say, but the Government will get its way."

The Whips would throw up their hands in horror if they had to cope with the European Parliament. MEPs vote not once but up to 400 times each day.

Any group of 30 or so members can table an amendment and we vote on them all. The process is a bit quicker than at Westminster. We vote by show of hands or by moving our fingers to the buttons on the electronic voting machines. We can average five votes every minute, but it is tedious in the extreme.

Trouble is, although we hotly debate the controversial arguments in our political group meetings the night before, when it comes to the actual voting we simply follow long lists of amendment numbers. It's easy to forget which are the ones that really matter.

So that day we voted to allow ten new countries to join the European Union, putting an end to some of the divisions created 60 years ago by Hitler and Stalin.

A huge battle over ethics and the meaning of life took place. Those of us who want medical researchers to be allowed to use stem cells to develop dramatic solutions to terrible diseases found ourselves on the losing side.

The effectiveness of existing policies against illegal drugs was challenged, and a radical call for a full evaluation was defeated by just one vote.

Oh, and we decided to let ferrets have passports. Or to be accurate, we decided to allow pet animals to be moved across Europe without having to go through quarantine. The British scheme of giving animals passports', actually microchips, once they have been vaccinated against rabies, is to be extended throughout the EU.

And to think I found the day dull!

April 24, 2003 09:30