Over loyalty to EU for his pension

sion of nearly £87,800.

Change Britain claimed that “EU pensions for Commissioners depend on ongoing loyalty to the EU” and Conservative MP Dominic Raab called for peers to declare their pension details.

He said: “Lords with generous EU pension pots should be open with the British people and declare this when they speak in Parliament on Brexit. The public would be rightly outraged if peers voted to protect their Brussels bonuses rather than respect the referendum result.

“It’s time the Lords came clean about their EU money and recognise the decision of the people by backing the Article 50 Bill unamended.”

However, in 2015 Mr Kinnock sought advice from the Lords authorities and was informed that “conditions attaching to pensions from European Union institutions do not normally require the pension to be registered or declared in proceedings in the House”.

He was told in writing it “follows that there is no requirement for you to change your present practice on registration and declaration of your EU pension”.

The former Islwyn MP said: “There can, obviously, be few – if any – peers or others in public life who are not aware that I, and colleagues on both sides of the House who were commissioners or officials in the EU institutions, receive retirement pensions to which we contributed. It is, consequently, not a secret of any kind.

“The idea that we have any obligations of deference to the EU because we receive pensions is a myth that has no substance in reality.

“Neither I, nor I’m sure my colleagues, would ever accept such a limit on our freedom of expression and there has never been any legal or political requirement that we should.

“Despite the easily-checked truth about the absence of conditions, some newspapers and political organisations have repeated the falsehood that our pensions ‘depend on loyalty to the EU’. They don’t and they never have.

“This is, therefore, yet another fib from the Europhobes which should be dismissed as the rubbish it is.”

Mr Kinnock, who rose to become Vice-President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, continued: “My support for UK engagement in the EU and its single market relates entirely to my conviction, which arises from the realities of our times, that the wellbeing and security of our country and its people are best served by continued membership.

“I will, in the wake of the referendum result, continue to make the argument that it is vital for our country to retain the closest achievable economic, trade, and political involvement.

“That has nothing to do with my past employment and pension.

“It is entirely linked to the future prosperity, opportunity and progress of the UK and the British people.”