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Richard Corbett

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Richard Corbett
MEP
Incumbent
Assumed office
1996
Personal details
Born (1955-01-06) 6 January 1955 (age 70)
NationalityBritish
Political partyParty of European Socialists
Websitehttp://www.richardcorbett.org.uk/
Note: this article concerns the contemporary MEP. For the 17th century poet, see Richard Corbett (poet).

Richard Corbett (born January 6, 1955, Southport, Lancashire) is a Member of the European Parliament for the Labour Party for [[Yorkshire and the Humber] [1]. He has been a member of the European Parliament since 1996. Under the single member constituency system that predates the present proportional representation system, he represented Merseyside West.

Education

Corbett was educated at Farnborough Road School in Southport, the International School of Geneva and Oxford University and later did an external doctorate at the University of Hull. At school, he was captain of the football team and played for the junior team of a Swiss second division club. At university, he was the secretary of the Labour Club and chairman of the student Oxford Committee for Europe. He co-ordinated the Oxford student "Yes" campaign in the 1975 referendum on membership of the European Community. He also skied for Oxford against Cambridge.

The European Parliament

Richard Corbett's activities in the European Studentsat Oxford led on to him being elected first to the youth board of the European Movement in Britain and then to the presidency of the Movement's European-level youth wing, the Young European Federalists (JEF), a post he held from 1979 to 1981, drafting their Manifesto which was the first to coin the phrase "democratic deficit" in relation to the European Parliament's then lack of any power over European legislation.

Corbett was secretary-general of the European Co-ordination Bureau of International non-governmental Youth Organisations from 1977 to 1981, representing youth organisations in the Council of Europe's European Youth Foundation and European Youth Centre; helped to set up the European Youth Forum; and represented western European youth organisations in negotiations with Eastern European organisations pursuant to the Helsinki Treaty (as well as at the World Festival of Youth in Havana in 1978 along with Charles Clarke and Peter Mandelson). He worked with Altiero Spinelli MEP on the latter's proposal for a draft treaty establishing a European Union, adopted by the European Parliament in 1984.

Before being elected to the European Parliament, Corbett worked in the voluntary sector and as a civil servant[1], later becoming a policy advisor to and then Deputy Secretary General of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament. He worked on drafting the parts of the treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam that increased the powers of the Parliament, notably helping to draft the "codecision procedure" which now applies for adopting European legislation through successive readings of the Parliament and the Council.

Corbett is a member of the Parliament's Constitutional Affairs committee and is the spokesman for the Labour Party, as well as the whole of the wider Group of the Party of European Socialists, on European constitutional affairs. In 2006, he was elected Deputy Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party, which he has remained ever since, declining (to some surprise) to challenge for the leadership when Gary Titley stood down in 2008.

In 2003 his proposals to re-write the European Parliament's Rules of Procedure were largely accepted. In 2004/05, he was the co-rapporteur (with Iñigo Méndez de Vigo) for Parliament on the Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe. This report formed the basis of Parliament's official position on the treaty, which he was then invited to present to several national parliaments.

In 2005, he was appointed as Parliament's negotiator (along with Joseph Daul MEP) to broker a new system of parliamentary scrutiny over Commission implementing measures (under the previously much-criticised "comitology" procedure), which led to an agreement between the Council of Ministers, the Commission and the Parliament in 2006 giving Parliament the right to veto quasi-legislative implementing measures. This represented a major increase in Parliament's powers over the Commission.

In 2007-08, he was again co-rapporteur with Iñigo Méndez de Vigo for Parliament on the Treaty of Lisbon, which replaced the constitutional treaty after two member ststes declined to ratify it, and was again rapporteur for a new overhaul of Parliament's procedures in 2009.

Throughout his career, Richard Corbett has been a strong advocate of EU reform and has a particular interest in improving democratic accountability by continuing to increase the European Parliament’s power within the EU institutional system. Professor Juliet Lodge of Leeds University has named Corbett as one of 5 "movers and shakers" in the European Parliament who "have brought the European Parliament from being a mere talking shop to a legislature with genuine power".[2]

Other activities

In 2006 he served on the Independent Review of the governance of European Football, set up by several national governments and UEFA and chaired by the former Portuguese Deputy Prime Minister Jose Luis Arnaut. Corbett chaired the sub-group on political aspects. He has maintained an interest in the governance of football ever since, taking up a number of issues with UEFA.

He holds a number of offices in the Labour Party. As well as being Deputy Leader of the Labour MEPs (EPLP), he is on the Regional Board (Yorkshire) and the National Policy Forum. He is Chair of the Labour Movement for Europe MEP group.

Richard Corbett is also the co-author of an eponymous academic textbook on the European Parliament (now the standard reference book on it across Europe) and several other publictions (see below). He was the first MEP from any country to have a blog[2]. He now also posts video blogs on his website.

Richard Corbett lives in Saltaire, Yorkshire, and has his constituency office in Leeds, where he shares premises with Hilary Benn MP.

He speaks English, French, German and Dutch.

Richard Corbett versus the UK Independence Party

Richard Corbett has shown concern over the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), and has been critical of them.

In this context, he courted controversy in June 2004 with claims in The Independent newspaper of UKIP links with the far-right British National Party in the local elections: "In Yorkshire, where both the BNP and UKIP put up candidates, they appear to have come to an arrangement not to stand against one another".

Richard Corbett's pamphlet "25 Things You Didn't Know When You Voted For UKIP"[3], published by Britain in Europe in 2004, was the subject of further controversy in October 2004, when the UKIP demanded the pamphlet be pulped, claiming that one item in the pamphlet "breaks a court order banning publication of details of a legal action involving one of the party's MEPs", namely the fraud case against Ashley Mote MEP. In practice, this gave further publicity to the pamphlet, which was not pulped, as it did not break any court order.

Following Ashley Mote’s imprisonment in September 2007 for fraud[4], Corbett called on the government to change the law which allowed the former UKIP MEP to be paid in full during his spell in jail. The Minister responsible for payment of MEPs (and MPs), Harriet Harman promised to look into the matter.

Publications

  • Corbett, Richard; Jacobs, Francis; Shackleton, Michael (2007), 'The European Parliament' (7 ed.), London: John Harper Publishing, ISBN 978-0955114472 {{citation}}: Check |author2-link= value (help); External link in |author2-link= and |publisher= (help)
  • 'The Treaty of Maastricht: from conception to ratification' Longman - Cartermill Publishing] (1993) ISBN 0582209064
  • The European Parliament's Role in Closer European Integration, London, Macmillan (1998)ISBN 0-333-72252-3 and New York, St Martin's Press (1998) ISBN 0-312-21103-1. Reprinted in paperback by Palgrave, London (2001) ISBN 0-333-94938-2
  • 'Electing Europe's First Parliament' Fabian tract, with Rod Northawl, Fabian Society, London (1977) ISBN 0307 7535
  • 'A Socialist Policy for Europe', pamphlet with Geoff Harris, introduction by thr Rt Hon Denis Howell MP. London, Labour Movement for Europe (1985)
  • 'Progress and Prospects' (of the draft treaty on European Union) in Juliet Lodge (ed), Foreword by Altiero Spinelli; 'European Union: The European Community in Search of a Future' London, Macmillan (1986) ISBN 0-333-39739-8
  • 'The 1985 Intergovernmental Conference and the Single European Act' in Roy Peyce (ed); The Dynamics of European Union', London, Croom Helm (1987) ISBN 0-7099-4327-X
  • 'The European Parliament's new "Single Act" Powers, in 'Nieuw Europa' Magazine, year 15, nr 1 (1989), The Hague
  • 'Representing the People', in A.Duff, J. Pinder and R. Pryce (eds); Maastricht and Beyond, London, Routledge (1994)
  • 'The European Parliament and the Idea of European Representative Government' in John Pinder (ed), Foreward by Princess Margariet of the Netherlands; 'Foundations of Democracy in the European Union' London, Macmillan (1999) ISBN 0-333-77470-1 and New York, St Martin's Press (1999) ISBN 0-312-22296-3
  • 'A Very Special Parliament: The European Parliament in the Twenty-First Century' in 'The Journal of Legislative Studies, Vol 8' (2002). Frank Cass. ISBN 1357-2334
  • 'Combatting Mythology and Changing Reality: the Debate on the Future of Europe', London, Labour Movement for Europe (2003)
  • 'The EU - Who makes the decisions? A guide to the process and the UK's role'. London, European Movement (2006)
  • Numerous newspaper articles and articles in academic journals

References

  1. ^ Richard Corbett's profile on MiCandidate.eu
  2. ^ http://jmecelabblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/movers-and-shakers-the-making-of-the-european-parliament/
  3. ^ Richard Corbett 25 Things You Didn't Know When You Voted For UKIP
  4. ^ Bonnie Malkin, "MEP jailed for benefit fraud", Daily Telegraph, 5 September 2007
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