One of the challenges of the debate around the European Commission and Union is that most of us hear and read so little about the work of these institutions that we are left to the soundbites that emerge from people such as Nigel Farage on the one side and Nick Clegg on the other.

Although Nigel Farage is one of my MEPs, I confess I never receive anything which attempts to connect with me in the way that MPs or Councillors do. He is not alone in this. In common with around 8M people in the South East who are not members of any Political Party, I rarely receive any form of correspondence from any MEPs. My MEPs include:

Sharon Bowles and Catherine Bearder who are both Lib Dems. I have met Catherine and she has a facebook page which allows people to follow her activities.

Keith Taylor who was once a Brighton Councillor who I met in that context and who I do hear from is our Green MEP.

Nirj Deva, James Elles, Daniel Hannan, Richard Anderson and Marta Andreasen who are all Conservatives. I do receive emails from Nirj Deva and Daniel Hannan is active on twitter.

Nigel Farage is our UKIP representative and who is often on our TV screens and occasionally uses twitter.

Peter Skinner is the Labour representative.

The challenge of communicating with 8 Million people is enormous and it is understandable that these 10 people struggle to engage with their electors. However I have found a very useful website called votewatch Europe which has the facility for informing followers of votes taken in the European Parliament although even here the news is not always prompt. This blog refers to a vote that was taken in the EP on 11th March and which I have only just received information on, but its importance is no less because of this.

Those who frequently complain about the working of the EU might be assumed to be at the front of the queue when it comes to establishing greater transparency in the working of the Parliament. After all the more transparent the processes, the better placed we will all be to understand the issues which our representatives face. On the 11th March all of our MEPs were asked to vote on a motion for resolution on “Public access to documents 2011-2013“. This was intended to ensure that documents are easier for you and I to lay our hands on. According to some of the information on the website “Secrecy and discretion belong to an era when Europe was built by diplomats and civil servants. Transparent administration benefits the interests of citizens, the fight against corruption and the legitimacy of the Union’s political system and legislation. The EU needs to take further steps to increase the transparency of its administration and its legislative process. The citizens are clamouring for more transparency. There are many interesting new initiatives, made possible by new technologies, creating insight into the activities of the EU institutions. However, too often the public have to rely on leaks and whistleblowers to learn about wrongdoing by the institutions. That seriously undermines trust.”

Whilst there may be other issues hidden within this legislation, it would be reasonable to assume that if our MEPs are interested in explaining their actions, they would take to social media at the very least to tell us. So far I have not seen any messages. However what I do know is that the two South East England MEPs who voted against this legislation are the two Eurosceptic MEPs Hannan (Conservative) and Farage (UKIP). Nirj Deva did not vote for this Motion. So on a matter that is intended to make the EU more transparent two Conservative MEPs and our only UKIP MEP chose not to vote in favour. Perhaps they will tell us why in due course!