Speeches!

5.30 Leave for Luton airport. The plane lands early and I get to the Parliament in Strasbourg by 11.30. As usual I am in well ahead of everyone else so I can get to work on my speeches and amendments. I have three speeches to do today. Also, on Friday we discovered that the GUE group had put an amendment in to the Payment Services Directive broadly the same as the one I persuaded ALDE not to put in. This means I will have to revisit the whole matter again. I decide that I will say something in my speech, which rather ironically is probably going to be at just the time when it might be discussed in the working group. I check the wording of the amendment again and the final text agreed with Council, and I am not convinced the amendment is in the right place anyway. Anyway, as before, my line will be that I agree with the principle of the amendment but it is a bigger issue than just payments.

15.30 Group meeting. Nothing spectacular, just updates and I then leave before the end because plenary is due to start at 17.00.

16.45 Head over to the hemicycle. Talk to some media people on the way. They want to know what I think about an issue of including inland waterways in shipping insurance compensation requirements. Typical, I do three speeches today and they want to know about something else.

Plenary starts and I get a small surprise when it is announced that the ALDE group have asked to delay the vote on my PPP report until Thursday, so I get up and explain that it is because we only got the legal opinion on comitology last Friday and have some final checks to make. (Later Titus our administrator says to Carol perhaps he should have warned me…). There is much to-ing an fro-ing among those involved in the payments portfolio. It is suggested to me that whether there is a majority for it depends upon our votes. I am pleased we had the discussion in Group last week, I just hope it holds and is not reopened in my absence.

The debate starts a bit late and I discover that my success last week in not tabling the amendment has not been reopened in Group so my voting list in which I have marked a vote against the GUE amendment is approved. I do my speech and at the end clarify that I persuaded our Group not to submit a similar amendment, that if it comes to it a vote against the amendment is not a vote against the underlying principle and that I hope it can be handled in another way. I think this probably increases the pressure for another way to be found.

19.00 We are having an ECON committee meeting. First is the ECB annual report. I get there for that, but leave at 7.30 because I am due on for my second speech of the day in plenary. This is on Criminal Sanctions for Intellectual Property. I have decided that unless my amendments pass, or the one from the Greens restricting the scope, then I will be voting against the directive irrespective of what the group line will be. Given this is about something where I have had professional experience for over 25 years, I can not desert my personal expertise. The Law Society also agrees with me on this, as does the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys and, it has to be said, the UK Government. Unfortunately it is unlikely that our shadow will take the same view. Anyway, I say my bit and make it clear that the whole thing should be restricted to counterfeiting and piracy, organised crime and risk to health and safety. Debates are already running late so my third speech, originally scheduled for around 10.30 is now moving towards midnight.

21.00 Back in the office working on papers, doing press releases, notes for colleagues and voting lists and generally filling in time until the start of the last debate. Having to speak late on a Monday, when getting up at 4 in the morning is beginning to feel like a cruel and unusual punishment. Hasn’t anyone here heard of the working time directive?

23.00 I go to plenary. Our debate on damages actions eventually starts about 23.25. I think Commissioner Kroes does a good introduction. I say that when this all started I felt like a latter day Cassandra, only unlike Cassandra notice has been taken of what I have said and that, even if gently, it is embedded in the report. It is rather too gently for the EPP, so it looks like it will be a battle of votes not a broader compromise deal. But the rapporteur and the Commissioner offer to be open for discussions. The Commissioner’s summing up is also very good, acknowledging that the devil will be in the detail – a phrase I nearly used in my own speech. We finish at ten past midnight. I get a car to my hotel and check in at half past midnight. I am by now well into my second wind and not at all tired. I have already made the decision that I am not going to our 8am Lib Dem breakfast.