Davis censors Maastricht and Europe Minister roles from campaign website

Conservative leadership contender David Davis has censored his role as a government whip responsible for bulldozing the Maastricht treaty through Parliament from his leadership campaign website. The U.K. Independence Party also said that he had also gone to great lengths to disguise his true role within the Foreign Office between 1994 and 1997.

[ClickPress, Mon Oct 03 2005] Mr Davis was in fact a government whip who pushed through the Maastricht treaty in 1992, and was subsequently the Europe Minister under Europhile Foreign Secretaries Douglas Hurd, and Malcolm Rifkind. He was previously the PPS to Francis Maude, who signed the Maastricht Treaty.

Mr Davis’ campaign website at www.modernconservatives.com omits to mention his role as a government whip at all, and rather than highlighting his role as Europe Minister, simply mentions that he was a Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth office.

Mr Davis’ former colleague, UKIP Leader Roger Knapman MEP, who resigned as a PPS over Maastricht, said it was ‘astonishing’ that Mr Davis should try to obscure his role in pushing through the Maastricht treaty, which was the largest single transfer of British sovereignty to Brussels.

“Given the current importance of the Europe Minister, I am surprised that David is not making far more of his experience of almost being in the Cabinet”, said Mr Knapman, who continued, “David has always known how to make the right noises to appeal to the Eurosceptics despite having a track record not dissimilar to Kenneth Clarke’s. It is little wonder that his memory is so selective.

“The question now is how to tell the difference between his true beliefs and his political expediency as he has spent many years balancing his actions with his rhetoric to ensure he does not fall off the fence.” ENDS
Notes to Editors:
David Davis was a government whip from 1990 to 1993, and was subsequently Minister for Europe from 1994 to 1997.
Roger Knapman was the Conservative MP for Stroud, a PPS and a Maastricht rebel.
For further information, please contact:
Roger Knapman MEP, UKIP Leader,
Mark Croucher, UKIP Press Office, 0207-222-9365 or 07960-584161

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