In a letter to the Daily Telegraph today 102 of them urge the Prime Minister to “opt out” of 130 EU laws, including the European Arrest Warrant, over the next two years. And this is no ordinary letter, signed as it is by the officers of the 1922 Committee – Chairman Graham Brady, Vice-Chairman Charles Walker, Secretary Mark Prichard and Treasurer Brian Brinley together with former Cabinet Ministers John Redwood and Peter Lilley

Crucially, the 102 warn Cameron that if he fails to get these powers back within this timescale, the transfer of powers to Europe will be irreversible.

This sounds to me very much like an ultimatum. The backbenchers apparently want Mr Cameron to use the “opportunity” provided by the Lisbon Treaty to repatriate up to 130 EU rules and regulations on policing. Since the UK opt out is due to end in June 2014, the Eurosceptics see this as their deadline.

Since the Tories have 306 seats in the House of Commons, 102 represents a third of the parliamentary Conservative party. To have such a high proportion of your MPs against you on an issue they believe to be of the utmost importance is not a very comfortable place to be, to put it mildly.

As I have said many times before, repatriation of powers is a policy which cannot be achieved. I can see no reason why 26 EU member states should agree to the demands one country, especially when they do not agree with the demands being made by the UK. What is more, David Cameron has not helped himself in the EU by increasingly marginalising the UK. Taking the Tories out of the centre-right European People’s Party in the European Parliament, and not signing up to the treaty changes in December last year are just the two most significant of Cameron’s actions to have alienated our colleagues in Europe.   

Cameron’s position is made even worse by the fact that many of these Eurosceptic MPs voted for him to be Tory leader because they believed he was one of them.

The Eurosceptics are, of course, merely using the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) as a hook for their own agenda. It would be foolish to claim all is well with the EAW. One of the main complaints concerns proportionality. We know that the UK, and Germany as well, get more warrants than they issue, and nowhere does it state that the warrant must only be used for major crimes. This matter is indeed being investigated and Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, has acknowledged that the warrant is being misused for low-level crimes.

Having only just got over being castigated for caving in on not opposing the “fiscal compact” countries having access to European Union institutions and the European Court of Justice, David Cameron is facing another onslaught. I’m tempted to wonder how long this war of attrition can go on, especially since the Tories’ Lib-Dem coalition colleagues have a very different, pro-European Union perspective.

Nicola Fairbrother took home a silver medal in Judo (56kg weight) from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. This was the first year that women were officially able to compete for medals in the sport, 18 years after its first appearance during the Tokyo Games of 1964.

Nicola was one of the first female athletes to compete in judo at Olympic level. Parity between men and women in the range of Olympic events has been a long time coming. At the Barcelona Games of 1992, 159 sports were open for men to compete in whilst there were only 89 in which women could take part. Following the inclusion of women’s boxing in the programme of London 2012, this year will be the first ever Olympics in which women and men can compete in the same range of sports.

Nicola’s silver medal at the Olympics was no mean feat but she just narrowly missed out on the gold. The following year, however, she became world number one when she won the World Title in Hamilton,Canada. Over the course of her 23 year career she also won gold at the European level.

Her performance was also recognised out of the dojo. In 1994 she was awarded an MBE for her contribution to British sport.  She was also named European Judoka of the year in 1993 and was runner up in the Sunday Times Sports Award several times.

Nicola has commented on the benefits of judo in all areas of life from promoting self confidence to developing respect for others. Nicola has praised the accessibility of the sport in that it for anyone of any size or shape; however, she has also raised the issue of the significant costs involved in taking part.

Like many professional sports, judo can be expensive to take part in, especially when youngsters are first starting out. The price of classes and equipment can act as a barrier to potentially successful competitors even trying the sport.

When it came to power in 1997 the Labour government recognised the benefits of access to sport at every level. From the beginning of its tenure it sought to improve the strategic direction of organisations such as Sport England to ensure accessibility for all. 

In 2009, the then Labour government set aside £10.2 million for the development of Judo at the grass-roots level to be channelled into the sport through Sport England over the following four years.

Nicola is a strong supporter of judo at grass-roots level, and is helping to inspire a whole new generation of judokas in her role of owner and editor of Koka Kids magazine, as well as through her work with schools, judo clubs and national governing bodies.

Nicola also now works as a judo commentator for the BBC and reports on the sport for the World of Judo magazine.

One of the great things about the Olympics is the opportunity it provides for sports with lesser media coverage to take top billing. Karina Bryant began practising Judo at the age of 10 in Camberley Judo Club in Surrey.  This was where she earned her black belt and where she continues to train to this day.

Karina enjoyed success in Judo early on taking silver at the Junior European Championships in 1995 before going on to become Junior World Champion in both 1996 and 1998.

Since then, Karina has won over 20 major medals including six at the World Championships and four European Championships golds.

Karina’s success led, in 2003, to inclusion named European Female Judo Player of the Year.  This in turn led to her being named in the Sunday Times’ top ten sportswomen of the year.  She gained further recognition in 2004 when she was named as one of the top 100 unsung inspirational heroines by the Daily Mail.

Karina did not have much success at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, going out in the first round.  Later that same year she suffered a serious neck injury and had to go through a great deal of rehabilitation to recover.

She made her triumphant return during the 2009 World Championships in Rotterdam, claiming the silver medal.  Karina narrowly lost in the final to Chinese fighter and reigning world champion Tong Wen.  What made this even more extraordinary was that it was thought that she would not even be able to compete in the competition due to her injury and only joined the 14-strong British team at the last minute.

Karina was Britain’s only medalist inRotterdam and said at the time:  ‘I feel great. I had a good year because I did not expect to be here. I am very happy.’

Karina Bryant is clearly a favourite to take home a medal at London 2012.  I hope to see her in the final against her old rival Tong Wen, the current Olympic champion in this category, where I’m sure she’ll use her home advantage to turn the tables and take the gold.

I have received a number of emails and have been regularly “tweeted” on the issue. Since it is a matter of concern, I have decided to post the following, which I hope will address the points which have been raised.

ACTA must target only commercial and not individual counterfeiters. I am strongly of the view, as are my fellow Labour MEPs, that the need to address serious counterfeiting should not lead to any erosion of civil liberties. In this regard I and other Labour MEPs object to any ‘three strike’ rule whereby Internet service providers can suspend the Internet connection of copyright infringers after two warnings. Equally my colleagues and I do not support so called border measures such as the searching by Customs of travellers’ iPods or laptops for illegally downloaded files.

Labour MEPs also share the frustrations of many constituents who believed the negotiations should have been conducted in a more transparent manner. The European Parliament put significant pressure on the European Commission during the negotiations to increase transparency. The European Commission was successful in persuading other ACTA negotiating partners to release a consolidated negotiating text. While the European Parliament continued to call for the further release of all negotiating texts with individual country positions, we were disappointed that further opening up of the negotiations could not be agreed by all negotiating parties.

The European Parliament now has a formal role in the eventual approval or rejection of this Agreement. The negotiations were concluded in November 2010, and each negotiating party is now in the process of ratifying and signing the Agreement. In the EU this requires agreement from the Council of Ministers (made up of the 27 Member States) and the European Parliament. On Thursday 26th January 2012 twenty-two Member States (including the UK) signed the agreement. The European Parliament will now draft a report to recommend whether or not Parliament should give its approval to the Agreement, and this will be done by the International Trade committee. This is expected to begin next month. Parliament’s political leverage over the European Commission has therefore been substantial given that the Agreement cannot be ratified without Parliament’s approval.

In addition to its legislative role, the European Parliament monitored the negotiations throughout the 11 rounds and adopted Resolutions highlighting our priorities to the Commission. In March 2010 my colleague David Martin MEP – in his capacity as Labour spokesperson on International Trade in the European Parliament – co-authored a Resolution which was adopted by Parliament. In November 2010 in response to the release of the draft text the Parliament again adopted a Resolution.

The European Parliament successfully incorporated several points on transparency and civil liberties into the Resolutions. Firstly we made it clear that the European Commission – as the EU’s negotiator in ACTA – needed to put pressure on the other participants to open up the negotiations to public scrutiny through the publication of a draft negotiating text.

The Parliament also stated that ACTA should not extend beyond the European Community ‘acquis’ or, in other words, no new intellectual property legislation should be created as a result. The European Union is a signatory to various international Agreements on intellectual property such as the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). It is important for the European Parliamentary Labour Party that ACTA is consistent with TRIPS and other existing Agreements on Intellectual Property.

You may be interested to read the full resolutions available here: ACTA Plenary Resolution 10 March 2010  and here: ACTA Plenary Resolution 24 November 2010 or watch the debate in which my colleague David Martin spoke: ACTA Plenary debate 9 March 2010

The final text of the Agreement can be read here: Final ACTA text

When the report went through the Culture and Education Committee in November of last year, the Daily Mail ran two stories which you can read here and here.

The problem seemed to be that the report made a suggestion that the flag of the European Union be worn on the kits of sports men and women and flown at major international sporting events held within the EU.

Now the report has gone through the parliament I expect to see some more stories denouncing Brussels as being interfering and trying to force the EU down everyone’s throat.  I thought I’d take this opportunity to pre-emptively rubbish these new ‘Euromyths’.

The first point to make is that the report is not legislative.  It’s called an ‘Own Initiative Report’ and is basically just a long list of suggestions.  It is only since the Lisbon Treaty came in to force that sport policy has been an EU competence.  These initial stages are basically about deciding what direction the EU is going to with its new authority, but as it stands, sport doesn’t even have a budget.

The second important point is one that even the Daily Mail acknowledges; the recommendation would be purely voluntary.  Here is what the paragraph actually says:

100.     Suggests that the European flag should be flown at major international sports events held on the EU territory and suggests to sports federations to consider the idea of having it displayed on the clothing of athletes from Member States, alongside the national flags; underlines that it should be entirely voluntary and up to Member States and sports organisations to decide whether they will use the aforementioned option;

Now I happen to think this is a rather silly suggestion.  There are number of reasons why displaying or wearing an EU flag at sporting events is not a great idea.  Most sports men and women identify with their home country and wear their flag proudly.  There are no European Union sports teams.  The closest we’ve got is the European team in the Ryder cup, but golf fans from Norway or Switzerland might object to seeing them wear an EU flag.  It’s a not very well thought out idea and that is why I and the rest of the European Parliamentary Labour Party (EPLP) voted against that paragraph in today’s vote.

Unfortunately the paragraph had the overwhelming support of almost everyone else, so it remains in the report.  The EPLP voted for the report as a whole because, apart from that one paragraph, we believed it to be a good document.  I believe that the EU can play a crucial role in tackling things like match fixing and corrupt players’ agents.  I didn’t think it was right to vote against a whole report full of good suggestions just because of one duff one.

But if you do hear anyone suggesting that the EU is trying to force their flag on the kit of your favourite football team, you might want to suggest they don’t believe everything they read in the Daily Mail.

The reason – Cameron is trying to look both ways and utterly failing. Britain is a member of the European Union but opted out of, not vetoed, changes to the Lisbon Treaty in December last year. (Thanks to Labour MP Chris Bryant for this succinct wording).

Unable to sustain his threat to prevent the 26 EU member states that signed up to the “fiscal pact” in December from using the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to uphold their agreement, David Cameron was forced into an embarrassing U-turn. He now accepts that the “fiscal pact” countries can use the European institutions to make sure the treaty changes are upheld.  

Cameron is, however, trying to detract from the mess he has made of this whole saga by telling us he will jump on the 25 (the Czech Republic now appears to have joined the UK) if they do anything which harms the EU single market. If this happens, Cameron will attempt to take measures against the treaty signers.

This is yet another example of Cameron nonsense. No issues concerning the single market are related to the changes to the Lisbon Treaty put forward in December. They are separate matters.

Cameron is again coming up with smoke and mirrors just as he did over the repatriation of powers idea. It goes like this: Cameron, himself an arch-Eurosceptic, needs to keep his feral Eurosceptic backbenchers on board, not least because they were instrumental in securing his leadership of the Conservative Party. However, David Cameron is now the Prime Minister of Great Britain and has duties and obligations in the European Union, not to mention the need to maintain relationships with key EU players. Moreover, Conservative policy is to stay in the EU.

So Cameron is really in a bit of a fix. He cannot fulfil his obligations to all sides. So he’s doing a bit of both and being mightily unsuccessful in the process. The Eurosceptics are still not happy while Jack Straw echoed the feelings of many when he said yesterday that “outside the (EU) door is not a good place to be.”

Never underestimate the extent of  the UK’s marginalisation in the EU under David Cameron’s leadership. Taking the British Conservative MEPs out of the centre-right European People’s Party Group in the European Parliament massively annoyed Angela Merkel. The opt-out, not veto, in Brussels on December 9 caused French President Sarkozy to refuse to shake Cameron’s hand. Merkel and Sarkozy, always an intriguing double act, are growing ever closer with Merkel pledged to support Sarkozy’s presidential election campaign, according to the Financial Times.

 Being a member of an important organisation but not fully committed to it strikes me as a completely ridiculous position. Would David Cameron and William Hague take the same view on NATO? 

We are in the EU, and have been for nearly 40 years. While it is by no means perfect, Britain is surely better in the European Union than lost in the twilight zone outside, especially since the UK could take a leading role if our leaders wished to do so.

Other European countries see working together as a real advantage and many not yet in the EU are very keen to join.

The British idea that we are better off alone is a myth from a past imperial age. Yet even then, Britain itself was never really alone. Since the 18th century we had a world-wide empire to back us up. Now that is no longer there, our only tenable world role is to be a major player in the EU.

Far from it. As Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander said in the Guardian this morning: “The unanswered question after this summit [the one which has just ended] remains what exactly David Cameron achieved by walking out of the EU negotiations last month? With the EU institutions now involved, it seems clear that all his earlier phantom veto achieved was to undermine British influence.”

The Brussels summit which ended yesterday endorsed the use of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to enforce the “fiscal pact”. Britain reserved its position, along with the Czech Republic, the only other EU member state to do so.

This latest climb-down by the British Prime Minister makes it even clearer that David Cameron achieved absolutely nothing by walking out of the last Brussels summit. He did not “veto” the treaty; he quite simply did not sign up to it. A veto implies preventing or stopping something happening. Cameron did not achieve this. Rather he took himself and the UK away from the agreement. “Refusal to agree” or “abnegation of responsibility” would be better terms for David Cameron’s antics.

However, this is not the view of the feral Tory Eurosceptics.

Cameron’s personal woes are at home while our country’s are in the EU. Losing influence and being marginalised in Europe do not help the UK. Because of our geographical size and proud history, we should be a major player at the heart of Europe, leading the EU, one of the world’s major power blocs, in the direction which would be best for Britain.

Meanwhile, unable to perform in any credible way in the EU, David Cameron is facing a  Eurosceptic backlash in the House of Commons as well as searing criticism from his own MEPs.            

Speaking about Cameron’s volte-face on the use of the EU institutions to enforce the fiscal pact, Martin Callanan, Leader of the ECR Group, largely made up of British Tories, is quoted in the Guardian this morning as saying, “I blame a combination of appeasing Nick Clegg, who is desperate to sign up to anything the EU puts in front of him, and the practical reality that the pact is actually quite hard to prevent.”

Leading feral Eurosceptic backbencher Bernard Jenkin said, “The government cannot retreat from that [not agreeing to the treaty changes last month], or they will refuel demands for a referendum on the UK’s present terms of membership of the EU.”

So Cameron’s attempts to pacify his Eurosceptics at the expense of Britain being able to take its rightful place in the EU are failing miserably.

The embattled Mr Cameron is also facing criticism from the backbench mob for doing what Nick Clegg wants.

I always thought coalitions were about agreeing joint policies and taking them forward together. Not, it appears, in the modern Conservative Party who are behaving as if they won the last general election with an overall majority. They did not, and would do well to remember it.

This is excellent news which I hope will be translated into concrete action in Britain to bring down youth unemployment which currently stands at a staggering 22% of those aged 16 to 24.

David Cameron is, moreover, discussing youth unemployment at an EU summit starting in Brussels today, according to the Observer. Cameron will apparently play a full part in the talks, a welcome change for our avowedly Eurosceptic Prime Minister. Let’s just hope he stays the course and doesn’t walk out as he did at the previous Brussels summit on 9 December last year.

The EU could, we understand, provide 22 billion euros from an underspend in the European social fund for measures to combat unemployment among young people. While youth unemployment stands at 22% in the UK, it is even higher in other EU member states – 51.4% in Spain, 46.6% in Greece and 30.7% in Greece.

The EU initiative is therefore very welcome. Having young people unable to find work constitutes a real tragedy, robbing them of the start in life they deserve, leading often to long-term defeatism and periods on the dole throughout their lives.

If the proposals are agreed, the European Commission will work with member states to draw up country specific programmes on how to address the problems and use the EU funds.

Unemployment is the scourge of our times. Even George Osborne is beginning to understand this as he teamed up with Ed Miliband joining leaders of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank urging action to create jobs amid warnings that youth unemployment was a time-bomb under the global economy.

However, Cameron and Osborne making all the right noises abroad is no substitute for action at home. The main reason unemployment is so high in Britain lies at the door of the Tory-led coalition’s fierce austerity measures. The cuts have been much too much, much too soon. Such policies could lead to a much longer recession than necessary, possibly even a double dip.

We, the British people, need a government that looks after all our interests not just those of a rich few. Everything possible should be done to bring down unemployment at home where it matters. International action is all very well, but the real solution is here, fairly and squarely with David Cameron and George Osborne.

OK so it could be worse, but recognition of the lack of parity was encouraging, but only because it means it has more chance of being addressed. Authoring an article for the Guardian was Rowena Lewis who stated in the piece: ‘Frankly, I don’t think 43% is anywhere near good enough for a sector in which 68% of employees are female.’ Her report: ‘Close to Parity a Study into Female Leadership in the Voluntary Sector’ is available to download from the Clore Social Leadership Programme’s website.

You can read her article for the Guardian here.

The Telegraph reported last week that fewer places will be made available this year to prospective university students. Some 10,000 temporary places– offered in previous years to cope with a sudden surge in applications – would not be made available in 2012.

David Cameron is, inevitably, being forced into U turns on Europe.  Having flounced out of the EU summit in Brussels as it was agreeing changes to the Lisbon Treaty in December last year, David Cameron seemingly felt the need to shore up his extraordinary behaviour.  He accordingly held forth in adamant fashion stating that the UK would resist any attempt to involve the EU institutions in enforcing the amendments to the treaty agreed by 26 of the 27 EU member states in December.

 Such a hot-headed, indeed stupid, way of operating was bound to come unstuck.

 It did not take long to unravel.  In abandoning his pledge to block the Eurozone from using common EU institutions to police the new regime of fiscal integration agreed by the “EU 26” in December, Cameron has given way to the European Union in a major way.

Britain will now no longer object to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) enforcing the international, as opposed to EU, treaty among the 26 EU member countries who agreed it. This is a significant U turn on the part of the Prime Minister, who as recently as 6 January said on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Let me be very clear that they [the ECJ] shouldn’t do things outside the European Union that are the property of the European Union.”  

Cameron has also accepted that the European Commission will act as “referee” in deciding whether Eurozone members were breaching the new rules.

Meanwhile, according to the Guardian, arch- Eurosceptic and leading feral Bill Cash, is not at all happy and is on record as saying, “There mustn’t be any backsliding. There are serious concerns about the lawfulness of these proposals. The institutions are simply not allowed to use the European Commission and the [European] Court of Justice in an unlawful manner.”

I predict there will be more situations like this for David Cameron. His feral backbenchers will push him one way while the EU (and possibly Nick Clegg) will pull him in another. The inevitable outcome will be victory for the EU. After all it’s one against 26, long odds indeed.

We already know that UK observers are at the tables looking at the changes to the Lisbon Treaty, despite Cameron’s refusal to sign in December. This represents a quiet U-turn which speaks volumes about the way David Cameron is seeking to resolve his EU dilemma. To try and have your cake and eat it is not a sustainable policyin the long run.