He was a Member of the European Parliament; he held the European Constituency of Merseyside East from 1989 to 1994, Merseyside East and Wigan from 1994 to 1999, and from 1999 until 2006 represented the North West counties of England with a 7 million population, one of the 3 Labour Party Members out of a total of 9 MEPs for the region under a proportional voting system.
[2] [3] In this role he was Head of Parliament delegations when negotiating the budget with the Finance Ministers of the 25 Member States which occurred several times each financial year.
[5] His special interests included reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, (he was chairman of an all-party, cross nationality grouping of MEPs which campaigned for agriculture reform), Development Aid, where he had a specific interest in South Africa and has written a Parliamentary Report on the funding of the EU Special Programme during the apartheid years.
[6] Since Australia and New Zealand are part of the Cairns Group, campaigning for agriculture reform within the WTO, he was a vice-president of the Parliamentary delegation to these countries.
He was the inaugural speaker at the Jean Monet lecture at the university in Christchurch, (followed the next year by Prime Minister Helen Clarke).
He has addressed civil servants and politicians in Canberra and Wellington as well as Pretoria and Cape Town on European matters.