MEP who shaped EU policy on GM food and financial regulation
JOHN PURVIS, who has died aged 83, represented Midscotland and Fife for the Conservatives in the first elected European Parliament, lost his seat in 1984, but returned 15 years later to serve two further terms as one of Scotland’s seven MEPS.
With farming and property interests in North East Fife and extensive knowledge of the international financial services industry, Purvis’s expertise proved valuable. He produced several reports that shaped EU policy, notably on biotechnology (supporting GM foods), telecommunications and financial regulation.
Early on, he worked on the Parliament’s Internal Market subcommittee to propose harmonised standards across a wide range of goods. Their work would form the basis of the 1985 Single European Act, the first major revision of the 1957 Treaty of Rome.
Purvis, who gave up his seat in 2009, was a fervent opponent of Brexit. He was chairman of Fife4europe and co-president of the European Movement in Scotland with the SNP’S Mike Russell. After the EU referendum in 2016 he worked with Fife’s MPS to make sure every EU citizen living there could obtain “settled status” and remain.
Colleagues on all sides regarded him as a man of principle, and “relentlessly polite”.
John Robert Purvis was born in St Andrews on July 6 1938, the eldest son of Lt-col RWB Purvis MC, a local farmer, and his wife who sat with him as a magistrate.
From Trinity College, Glenalmond, he was commissioned into the Scots Guards for National Service in 1956, then read Moral Philosophy and Political Economy at St Andrews University.
Graduating in 1962, he went into banking with First National City Bank in London, New York and Milan, then in 1969 moved to Edinburgh. In 1973 he went home to St Andrews to found Gilmerton Management Services, a financial consultancy with a focus on Europe.
Selected to fight Midscotland & Fife in 1979, Purvis took the seat – not promising Tory territory – with a 7,487 majority over Labour. At Strasbourg, he became whip of the European Democratic Group, an association of conservative MEPS from various countries, and from 1982 its spokesman on research, energy and technology.
But at the 1984 elections – at the height of the miners’ strike – he lost by 27,166 votes to Labour’s Alex Falconer. He had to wait until the 1999 Euroelections to be returned one of Scotland’s seven MEPS, and was re-elected in 2004.
In the Parliament, he questioned the legality of UK Customs officers confiscating alcohol and tobacco bought for personal use from travellers returning from Europe.
When asked to give evidence to a Westminster select committee on the shortcomings of the EU’S accounting system, Purvis urged UK politicians to show a “sense of proportion” about the incidence of fraud and mistaken funding, noting that Britain’s welfare budget had “not passed muster for longer than the EU budget, and for similar reasons”.
His swansong came in March 2009, after the global financial meltdown, when the European Commission were toying with introducing a “European Systemic Risk Council”, chaired by the European Central Bank, and a “European System of Financial Supervisors” to co-ordinate EU members’ national watchdogs.
Purvis argued that while “we should encourage national regulators to cooperate... national regulators must not be dictated to by a supranational body.” Nor should the EU “muddy the waters of jurisdiction by giving the ECB powers to intervene in the economies of non-eurozone countries”.
He was appointed CBE in 1990.
John Purvis married Louise Durham in 1962. She survives him, with their son and two daughters.
John Purvis, born July 6 1938, died March 20 2022