Edward McMillan-Scott

Edward McMillan-Scott (born 15 August 1949) is a British politician.

McMillan-Scott was born 15 August 1949 in Cambridge, England, one of seven children of the late Walter, an architect, and the late Elisabeth McMillan-Scott, née Hudson.

He was educated privately by Dominican friars.

He worked across the continent, the USSR and Africa as a tour director for a US company for several years.

He speaks French, Italian, some German and Spanish.

He became a member of the Conservative Party in 1967 and joined the European Movement in 1973.

From 1973 he worked in public affairs and in 1982 set up his own Whitehall consultancy.

His clients included the Falkland Islands Government.

He was one of the joint regional coordinators for the Yes to Europe campaign in the 1975 referendum on EC membership.

He was a pro-EU Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Yorkshire and the Humber constituency from 1984 until 2014.

McMillan-Scott was elected as the MEP for York from 1984 to 1994, then MEP for North Yorkshire from 1994 to 1999, and an MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber from 1999 until 2014.

In 1992 he founded the EU's Instrument for Human Rights and Democracy (EIDHR) - now the EU's Global Europe Human Rights & Democracy Programme, which remain's the world's largest dedicated programme.

McMillan-Scott was leader of then 36 Conservative MEPs 1997–2001, one of the largest-ever UK delegations.

McMillan-Scott was leader of the British Conservative MEPs between September 1997 and December 2001, and attended the Shadow Cabinet on European issues.

He renegotiated the terms of their membership of the majority centrist European People's Party (EPP) group in 1999.

David Cameron, the UK premier, launched the Conservative-led nationalist successor, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group after the European election that year.

He was the last and one of the longest-serving UK Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament 2004–2014.

He held its Human Rights and Democracy portfolio.

On 23 July 2004 he was elected fourth of the 14 Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament.

He was re-elected a vice-president in 2007, 2009 and 2012.

McMillan-Scott's special responsibilities as vice-president included relations with national EU parliaments and the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, which brings together 280 MPs from the EU, North Africa and the Middle East.

When the composition of Cameron's new ECR group was announced after the European elections of 2009, McMillan-Scott protested and left.

The new group was described by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg as "a bunch of nutters, homophobes, anti-Semites and climate change deniers".

In July 2009 McMillan-Scott successfully stood as the first-ever independent vice-president, against the nominee of the ECR Group, Polish MEP Michał Kamiński, criticising Kamiński's alleged past links to extremism, confirmed inter alia by the Daily Telegraph.

He is the only vice-president to have been elected without an official party candidature.

After re-election as vice-president in 2009, his responsibilities as vice-president were Democracy and Human Rights, relations with national parliaments, and chairing the European Parliament's Audit Panel.

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.

He then sat as ALDE Vice-President of the European Parliament.

In January 2012, he was re-elected as vice-president for the fourth time.

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.

After re-election in 2012 he continued with the democracy and human rights portfolio and additionally the Sakharov Prize Network and transatlantic relations.

He founded the regular forum between the Human Rights and Democracy Network, more than 40 Brussels-based NGOs, and the European Parliament, whose aim is to maximise EU attention to these topics.

However, McMillan-Scott refused to join the ECR and sat as an Independent and Liberal Democrat until 2014.

In the 2014 election he lost his seat as an MEP.

McMillan-Scott was elected Patron of the non-party European Movement UK, a pro-EU membership organisation founded by Winston Churchill, at its London AGM in 2014.

Since 2017 he has coordinated a forum of operational pro-European organisations known as Where Next for Brexit? now renamed Pro EU Forum UK. This was the stakeholder forum for the Grassroots Coordinating Group set up by former MPs Chuka Umunna and Anna Soubry to argue for a second referendum on Brexit and is now 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 publicly for a second referendum.

Background McMillan-Scott is a lifelong pro-European.

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.