Gerard Batten
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Gerard Batten is a Member of the European Parliament for London for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). He was first elected in 2004.
He was a founder member of UKIP in September 1993. He was the first Party Secretary from 1994 to 1997. He has fought local elections, a by-election, a European election, and two general elections as a UKIP candidate. As well as his seat in the European Parliament he is a member of UKIP's National Executive Committee.
Batten was appointed a member of the European Parliament's Security & Defence Committee in July 2004, and shortly afterwards was also appointed UKIP's official spokesman on Security and Defence. In this role, he has attacked the Labour government's plans to introduce Identity Cards. [1]
Before becoming an MEP he had been a salesman for British Telecom.
In April 2006, he cited allegations by a London constituent and former FSB agent, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, that the Italian Centre-Left leader and former President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, had been the KGB's "man in Italy", demanding an inquiry into the allegations.