Profile of Edward McMillan-Scott  Edward McMillan-Scott comes from a farming and professional background. Born in Cambridge on August 15 1949 he is one of seven children. He was educated privately by the Dominican friars. At school he ran the debating society and the printing press.
As a young man he was a tour director with a US company, taking groups across Europe, the former Soviet Union - where he was briefly arrested for straying off the tourist path in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) - as well as Africa. His parents (below) were active Conservatives. His father Walter was an architect and was elected President of Pop (the Eton prefects). He died in 1999. His mother Elisabeth primarily did charity work for groups such as SSAFA (needy ex-Soldiers' Sailors' and Airmans' Association), the Womens' Institute and Roman Catholic charities. She died in 2004.  
In 1967 Edward joined the Conservative Party. He was a busy branch member, and later became a branch chairman up to and through the 1983 General Election.  In 1972 he married Henrietta, from a branch of his maternal family. They have two daughters - Lucinda (l) born in 1973 and Arabella (r) born in 1976 - and two grand-daughters.
In 1975 he joined a large public relations firm and from 1976 specialised in governmental and parliamentary relations. Among his clients was the Falkland Islands Committee, set up to represent the islanders in the UK, which he worked for throughout the 1982 Argentine invasion.
In 1983 he set up his own Whitehall public affairs consultancy: he then represented the Falkand Islands Government and a number of commercial clients.
In 1984 he was elected to the European Parliament to represent the York Euro-constituency, which included most of the county of North Yorkshire and parts of North Lincolnshire.
He was re-elected in 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009.
From 1997 - 2001 he was leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament and sat on the Europe committee of the Shadow Cabinet, which he also attended. He was a member of the 2009 Conservative Party's Election Strategy Committee and also the Candidates Committee.
His hobbies are reading, classical music, conservation and modern art.
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| Edward's CV
 Edward McMillan-Scott was elected one of the two Conservatives among six MEPs (2 Conservative, 1 Labour, 1 Liberal Democrat 1 UKIP and 1 BNP) elected in the Yorkshire & Humber Region under Proportional Representation on June 7 2009. He was elected Vice-President of the European Parliament in July 2004 and re-elected in 2006 and 2009.
On July 15, the Conservative whip was withdrawn by Timothy Kirkhope, leader of the Conservative MEPs after McMillan-Scott stood against Michal Kaminski for re-election as Vice-Pesident and won. He has asked David Cameron to restore the whip (see As Vice-President). On September 15 he was expelled by the Conservative Party Board without notification, consultation or explanation. He has appealed.
From September 1997 – December 2001 he was Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament. He has also served on the Conservative Party Board and the Shadow Cabinet Europe Committee. Born in Cambridge in 1949, he joined the Conservative Party in 1967, the European Movement in 1973 and was first elected as an MEP in 1984.
In the European Parliament he has been Conservative spokesman on Foreign Affairs & Security, Economics and Transport. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, his “European Democracy Initiative” has spent €140M each year developing democracy and civil society worldwide, but especially in the ex-Soviet empire and Islamic world. Several hundred projects have been financed, from grass-roots activity to pan-European programmes. He is now focussing on the Democracy Backlash from China through Cuba to Egypt, Russia and Zimbabwe: these are the countries which are resisting reform. He was the European Parliament's rapporteur on relations with China (1996-1997) and was the first politician to visit Tibet after a 1993 embargo. He is also a founding member of the Washington-based International Movement of Parliamentarians for Democracy.
He was the European Parliament’s first tourism spokesman, from 1984-91, and the European Year of Tourism (1990) was his project. His campaign against timeshare and Costa Villa fraud and malpractice won wide support, and led to both EU and national consumer laws. He was singled out by ‘whistleblower’ Paul Van Buitenen for his role in the 1999 fall of the Commission.
McMillan-Scott was first elected to the European Parliament in 1984 and re-elected in 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009. He was educated privately by the Dominican friars. He was a tour manager for a US company in Europe, Africa, Scandinavia and the USSR and then a parliamentary and government affairs consultant in London, founding his own company. His clients included the Falkland Islands Government, Electronic Data Systems and the Channel Tunnel Group. He is a Patron of the BBC World Service Trust, Member of Court of University of Bradford and the Liaison Committee of the National Coal Mining Museum for England. He speaks French, Italian, some Spanish and German.
He comes from a farming and professional background and is married to Henrietta, a lawyer. They have two daughters, Lucy (born 1973) and Arabella (born 1976) and two grand-daughters.
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