Taking up my seat on the parliamentary delegation to Chile

I have now taken up a seat on the parliamentary delegation to Chile.

As well as parliamentary committees, MEPs also sit on 'delegations'. These are similar in structure to committees, but their purpose is to engage with other countries and blocs outside the EU. There are 41 such delegations.

When taking up my seat as an MEP I was told, along with my colleagues, that UKIP would not take part in these delegations as they were simply opportunities for 'taxpayer-funded jollies'. In fact, this was not the full truth.

Without our knowledge or permission, our seats on delegations were being traded away in order to attract more members into the EFD group. One Danish MEP, who has subsequently left the EFD to sit alongside the British Conservatives, at one point sat on no less than 6 delegations.

Our seats were traded away and given in some cases to pro-EU MEPs. Instead of giving us the opportunity to engage with foreign governments and tell them the truth about the EU, we were handing our swords to the enemy. All this was hidden from us.

Of course, we could have taken our seats on the delegations and refused the junkets; much of the work is done in Brussels and through one to one meetings anyway.

The value of this work to the national interest cannot be underestimated, and I will give just two examples. The delegation to Chile, for example, was until recently chaired by a Spaniard, and at the time of writing there are no less than 5 Spanish members compared to one Briton. The Spanish have strong economic and political interests there, of course.

More significantly, the delegation to Mercosur, the South American trading bloc that includes Argentina, is also chaired by a Spaniard, again one of five Spanish members, and there is not one single British delegate. There is nobody on that delegation to put the British case to Mercosur. As we approach the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the Falklands, let us remember this: we need to be on the battlefield in order to win the battle.

I am afraid that there may also be another reason why some MEPs are more comfortable not engaging: they simply do not understand what is going on in Brussels and Strasbourg. It is far easier to sit on the sidelines cat-calling then to enter the debate at a meaningful level. This is a great shame. I remember the debate on whether or not UKIP should take up seats won in euro-elections. That was a divisive time in our party's history. What is the point of taking up a seat and then doing nothing with it? Ours is an important and noble cause, surely it deserves more exertion and effort than simply sitting on the sidelines and drawing a salary?