After leaving Scotland, Moraes settled in East London, living and volunteering at Toynbee Hall, an anti-poverty charity, where he was later a Council Member. He was appointed House of Commons researcher to MPs John Reid and Paul Boateng following the 1987 General Election and became a national officer at the Trades Union Congress in 1989. During this period, he was also a representative to the European Trade Union Confederation. Prior to becoming an MEP, Moraes received recognition as director of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, a UK-based independent legal protection NGO founded in 1967 specialising in refugee and migration issues. At JCWI he helped organise legal challenges in the UK and European Courts succeeding Dame Anne Owers as director in 1992. At this time he was also executive secretary to the Immigrants' Aid Trust. Moraes was appointed a Commissioner at the Commission for Racial Equality 1997-2002 and was an elected Council member of Liberty 1994-2002. He has campaigned and written regularly on migration, refugee, human rights and privacy/digital issues. He contested the parliamentary constituency of Harrow West in the 1992 General Election, placing second with 22.5% of the vote.
Member of the European Parliament, 1999–2020
He was elected to the European Parliament in the 1999 European elections, that year becoming the first South Asian origin MEP elected to the European Parliament and London's first Black and Minority Ethnic MEP. He was re-elected to the European Parliament at the number one position on the Labour Party list in the 2004 and again in the first place position in the 2009, and 2014 European Elections. Initially a member of the Employment and Social Affairs and Legal Affairs and Internal Market Committees he was involved in the campaign for and identifying barriers to the EU wide implementation of the Race Equality Directive. His legislative reports include the Protection of Minorities in an Enlarged Europe, Protection of Seasonal Workers in the EU and Blue Card Migration Directive . From 2009 to 2014 he was the elected Spokesperson for the Socialists and Democrats Group on the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee.. In 2013 Moraes was appointed Rapporteur for the Parliament Inquiry into Mass Surveillance following the leaks from Edward Snowden. The Inquiry and his Report "US NSA surveillance programmes, surveillance bodies in various Member States and their impact on EU citizens' fundamental rights and on transatlantic cooperation in Justice and Home Affairs",voted in March 2014, is sometimes referred to as the Parliament's "European Digital Bill of Rights" as it looks at human rights and commercial priorities for the EU in the areas of data protection, privacy, surveillance, governance of the internet, the problem of extreme content and take-down policy, encryption, and cybercrime. He was Chair of the European Parliament Inquiry into Facebook in 2018 opening with a special evidence session questioning Mark Zuckerberg and looked at wider issues of electoral interference, misuse of personal data, and the implications of Cambridge Analytica. In July 2014 Moraes was elected Chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. Following the UK Referendum in 2016, he became a member of the European Parliament's Brexit Steering Committee until the 2019 European Elections. He contributed to the Parliament's position on the Withdrawal Agreement primarily in the areas of EU citizens rights, the rights of UK citizens in the EU, security union and law enforcement, data protection, data adequacy and free movement. In 2018 as part of his Committee's increasing role in the external & humanitarian aspects of the refugee crisis, he led delegations to Libya, Niger, Lebanon and the Greek "hotspots" to improve the European Parliament's response. In 2019 he continued his long standing refugee work as Rapporteur for the European Asylum Support Agency. Also in 2018 he was Standing Rapporteur for the European Parliament consent procedure on the European Commission's decision to directly invoke Article 7 of the EU Treaties for the first time into alleged rule of law breaches by the Polish government. He led all-party European Parliament rule of law delegations that year to Poland and also Slovakia following the murder there of journalist Ján Kuciak. In 2019 he oversaw, with the Committee on Budget Control, the European Parliament mandate to create and appoint the first European Chief Public Prosecutor and operational office tackling corruption, calling on EPPO's remit to be extended to fight serious organised crime, including people traffickers. In May 2019, Claude Moraes stood for the Labour Party at the number one position in the London constituency and was reelected in the 2019 European Elections. Following those elections he was elected Vice President of the Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament.
Honours and recognition
In 2011 Moraes was Dod's and the European Parliament Magazine's 'MEP of the Year' for his work on Justice and Civil Liberties. In 2016 he was named as one of Politico Magazine's "40 MEPs Who Actually Matter". In 2017 the organisation Vote Watch Europe listed him as "the most influential" UK MEP and sixth most influential MEP in the European Parliament. In November 2019 along with MPs Alberto Costa and Stuart McDonald he was given the Ambassador award for his work on EU citizens rights by the organisation the3million. Claude Moraes was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2020 New Year Honours.
