Edward McMillan-Scott

Edward McMillan-Scott
Eighth Vice-President of the European Parliament
In office 17 January 2012 – 1 July 2014
President	Martin Schulz
Preceded by	Isabelle Durant
Succeeded by	Sylvie Guillaume
Twelfth Vice-President of the European Parliament
In office 14 July 2009 – 17 January 2012
President	Jerzy Buzek
Preceded by	Diana Wallis
Succeeded by	Oldřich Vlasák
Fourth Vice-President of the European Parliament
In office 30 July 2004 – 14 July 2009
President	Josep Borrell Hans-Gert Pöttering
Succeeded by	Miguel Ángel Martínez Martínez
Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament
In office 16 September 1997 – 14 December 2001
Preceded by	Tom Spencer
Succeeded by	Jonathan Evans
Parliamentary offices Member of the European Parliament for Yorkshire and the Humber In office 10 June 1999 – 2 July 2014 Preceded by Constituency established Succeeded by Jane Collins Member of the European Parliament for North Yorkshire In office 9 June 1994 – 10 June 1999 Preceded by Constituency established Succeeded by Constituency abolished Member of the European Parliament for York In office 14 June 1984 – 9 June 1994 Preceded by Constituency established Succeeded by Constituency abolished
Personal details
Born	(1949-08-15) 15 August 1949 (age 75) Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England
Political party	Non-party (2019–present) Liberal Democrats (2010–2019) Independent (2009–2010) Conservative (1967–2009)
Spouse	Henrietta McMillan-Scott

Edward McMillan-Scott (born in Cambridge on 15 August 1949) is a British politician. He was a pro-EU Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Yorkshire and the Humber constituency from 1984 until 2014. He was the last and one of the longest-serving UK Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament 2004–2014, holding its Human Rights and Democracy portfolio throughout. After losing his seat as an MEP he became active in campaigning against Brexit and coordinates the largest pro EU forum in the UK.

McMillan-Scott was elected an honorary Board member of the European Parliament's 700-member Former Members Association in 2014 and has been re-elected biannually since. In 2014 he was also elected an honorary Patron at its AGM by the European Movement UK, which he first joined aged 23 in 1973.

McMillan-Scott is a lifelong pro-European.^[1] Following David Cameron's decision to withdraw the Conservative MEPs from the centrist European People's Party in order to form the European Conservative and Reformist's Group, McMillan-Scott objected. When the composition of Cameron's new ECR group was announced after the European elections of 2009, McMillan-Scott protested and left.^[2] The new group was described by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg as "a bunch of nutters, homophobes, anti-Semites and climate change deniers".^[3]

In July 2009 McMillan-Scott successfully stood as the first-ever Independent vice-president of the European Parliament against the nominee of the ECR Group, Polish MEP Michał Kamiński, criticising Kamiński's past links to extremism, confirmed inter alia by the Daily Telegraph.^[4] Shortly before this, McMillan-Scott was telephoned by then UK premier David Cameron, who offered him a peerage (membership of the House of Lords) the usual reward for leaders of the Conservative group of MEPs (Henry Plumb, Christopher Prout, Timothy Kirkhope etc ) but McMillan-Scott declined.

In 1992, McMillan-Scott founded the EU's Instrument for Human Rights and Democracy (EIDHR) - now the EU's Global Europe Human Rights & Democracy Programme,^[5] which remain's the world's largest dedicated programme with an annual budget of Euro 1.5 billion.

In March 2010, he joined the Liberal Democrats with whom he had usually worked closely on democracy and human rights issues. In May 2010 he became a member of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) in the European Parliament.^[6] He then sat as ALDE Vice-President of the European Parliament.^[7] In January 2012, he was re-elected as vice-president for the fourth time.^[8] He once again received the portfolio for Democracy and Human Rights as well as additionally gaining the Sakharov Prize Network, which underpins the parliament's annual prize for freedom of expression and responsibility for transatlantic relations.

Since 2017 McMillan-Scott has coordinated a forum of operational pro-European organisations known as Where Next for Brexit?^[9] now renamed PRO EU FORUM UK. This was the stakeholder forum for the Grassroots Coordinating Group^[10] set up by former MPs Chuka Umunna and Anna Soubry to argue for a second referendum on Brexit and is closely linked to the European Movement. McMillan-Scott and colleagues raised over £2 million for the People's Vote campaign, launched in April 2018 to campaign for a second referendum on Brexit.

By 2019 the People's Vote campaign was organising massive demonstrations, culminating in a million-strong rally at Westminster in October 2019. That same weekend, the ten DUP (Ulster) MPs decided to back the campaign, thereby creating a parliamentary majority. At this point Roland Rudd, a financial PR and chair of Open Britain - just one of several organisations under the People's Vote umbrella - crashed the campaign by sacking 40 staff, changing the locks at People's Vote's Millbank offices and seizing its financial and data assets, using a financial vehicle he had secretly set up that summer. Rudd has never explained his motive, although within days he was one of only 30 guests at the wedding of Boris Johnson, with whom he had been at Eton: another guest was their schoolmate Hugo Dixon, former chair of In Facts, a website about Brexit.