Helen Reeves is the only British woman to have won a medal in canoeing at the Olympics since the event was introduced.  Helen competed in the kayak slalom event (K-1).

A canoeist since the age of ten, Helen was a World Junior Championship gold medal winner in 1996 but her competitive career was blighted by a succession of shoulder injuries and she was forced to watch the Sydney Olympics in 2000 from a hospital bed awaiting an operation. She won bronze medals in the K-1 team event at both the 2002 and 2003 World Championships and was placed in the top 10 of the individual K-1 on both occasions as well.

But her biggest success came at the 2004 Athens Olympics.  Helen received the medal in a very unusual manner. She had originally been placed fourth on aggregate times but, whilst she was being interviewed by a television crew about her disappointment at missing a medal, several members of the crowd shouted at her to look at the scoreboard. The official results had been changed and an extra penalty had been judged against Peggy Dickens. This was enough to lift Helen into third by a fraction of a point.

Sadly for Helen the injuries that have blighted her career returned after the victory in Athens and she has now retired from competitive kayaking.  She still has a great passion for the sport though, working as a commentator during the 2008 Beijing Olympics and as a press office for GB Canoeing.  She will be present again to support on the new generation of kayakers this summer inLondon.

Fiona got the taste for kayaking from her mother, an international flatwater sprint paddler, when she was very young.  Fiona was taken on her first boat when she was just a few months old and began learning on flatwater when she was five, competing for the first time aged eight. She was encouraged to try out slalom racing by her instructor and became hooked immediately.

After that Fiona won a bronze medal at the Junior World Championships in 2000 and won the overall Junior World Cup Series in the same year. As an Under 23 athlete, she won a team bronze medal in 2004 and an individual bronze medal in 2005, both at the European Under 23 Championships.

Fiona then moved on to adult competitions and enjoyed even more success.  She won two medals at the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships with a silver (K-1: 2006) and a bronze (K-1 team: 2007). She also won three bronze medals at the European Championships.

Unfortunately for Fiona, she failed to get past the qualifying rounds when she went to Beijing in 2008, but I’m sure that this will inspire her to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again in London.

Yesterday the European Parliament passed a report on equal pay for male and female workers for equal work or work of equal value. Despite having legislation on equal pay for over 50 years there is still a 16%-17% gender pay gap in the EU. All attempts to lessen and ultimately get rid of the pay gap between women and men are absolutely necessary, and this report is an important step.

In view of the lack of progress to date, MEPs urged the European Commission and member states to reinforce existing legislation with appropriate types of effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions for employers in breach of it. These sanctions should include penalties, administrative fines and disqualification from public benefits and subsidies.

It is not just that women are at a higher risk of falling into poverty. Statistics show that the gender gap is growing with age. There is also a gap when it comes to pensions and older women have a greater risk of falling into poverty than men do.

Even in sectors where women employees prevail, men tend to have higher salaries. Horizontal and vertical segregations of economic sectors are deeply rooted in the economies of all EU member states, but it has also much to do with culture and with society’s approach to motherhood.

It is really striking is there are now more women who graduate, and statistics show that women who start their working careers are better paid than young men in the UK. The gap appears for the first time when women return to the labour market after their first maternal leave.  It is time to change the approach to motherhood and evaluate parenthood in society.

Yesterday’s report makes several concrete proposals, including:

• more transparency about the way      salaries are negotiated and settled to prevent women receiving less than      men
• the European Parliament should offer      a “Women in Business Europe” prize to be awarded to employers
• employers to be required to carry out      regular equal pay audits
• attention to part-time work where the      gender pay gap is highest
• measures to ensure disadvantaged      women and women with disabilities are not treated less favourably
• additional research on this issue to      be carried out by the European Institute for Gender Equality as well as EU      member states
• the European Commission to review and      update existing legislation
• member states to behave in an      exemplary manner regarding ending the gender pay gap and each to appoint      an equal pay champion

You may be interested to know that British Tories voted against the paragraphs in the report outlining the first two of these recommendations.

Since the votes on these two paragraphs were recorded, I can tell you that the following Tories voted against both: Campbell-Bannerman, Chichester, Deva, Elles, Ford, Foster, Fox, Girling, Harbour, McClarkin, McIntyre, Stevenson, Swinburne, Tannock, Van Orden, Yannakoudakis. The leader of the ECR Martin Callanan voted against the second of these two paragraphs but did not appear to vote on the first.

All of the above abstained on the final vote to agree the report with the honourable exception of Marina Yannakoudakis who voted for it. Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, however, voted against.

If David Cameron is serious about gaining women’s votes and promoting gender equality, he really should do something about his errant MEPs.

I am absolutely delighted to tell you that this Declaration has received enough signatures to be adopted as a resolution of the European Parliament. I will be speaking on this in the EuroParl Chamber later today. 

My thanks to my fellow MEPs who jointly the Declaration  - Veronique de Keyser, a Belgium Socialist and Democrat Group member, Sean Kelly from Ireland who belongs to the EPP Group, British Liberal-Democrat Bill Newton-Dunn and Marie-Christine Vergiat, a member of the Communist Party in France. 

 The Written Declaration urged the European Commission to make a continued commitment to reducing the number of vaccine preventable deaths in its future action. You may read the full text here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2fEP%2f%2fNONSGML%2bWDECL%2bP7-DCL-2012-0004%2b0%2bDOC%2bPDF%2bV0%2f%2fEN 

Thanks too to GAVI – the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, Global Health Advocates, the One Campaign and Results UK for all their help in getting signatures during the past few months.

While there is no doubt that there has been progress increasing vaccination coverage around the world, it is estimated that 1.7 million children continue to die of vaccine preventable diseases like polio each year. We can only hope that the Written Declaration will help in some way to reduce this number.

Voting is a basic human right, and if we agree that prisoners are entitled to other basic human rights then disenfranchisement is a contradiction of this view.

The ECHR has now twice ruled that losing voting rights is a breach of prisoners human rights and the court twice decreed the UK’s total ban to be illegal.

Despite this nothing has been done. In addition, the waters have been somewhat ‘muddied’ as a result of how the ECHR has enforced this ruling because member states have been given discretion in how they regulate any form of ban. This complicates matters and allows for avoidance of any such assurance that those incarcerated will have the right to vote.

For example the ECHR said it now accepted the UK government argument that ‘each state has a wide discretion as to how it regulates the ban, both as regards the types of offence that should result in the loss of the vote and as to whether disenfranchisement should be ordered by a judge in an individual case or should result from general application of a law.’

The problem this creates isn’t just an unecessary level of bureaucracy but also it encourages class lines to be drawn if, for example, those who commit white collar crimes and/or who have a suspended sentence are expmpt from disenfranchisement then rightly further issues arise. In addition any ruling would need to be consistently and fairly used therefore a ruling by a judge on a case by case basis will create further problems.

The right to participate in free elections, like the right to freedom from torture and degrading treatment, freedom of forced labour or the right to an education are all basic human rights exercised in the UK. If any of these rights and freedoms are breached, you have a right to an effective solution in law.

The UK was given nine months to introduce at least partial voting rights for some prisoners in November 2011, but has not done so. A new six month deadline was triggered by yesterday’s ruling- now it really is the time to get this right and allow prisoners the opportunity to exercise their basic human right.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, summed it up perfectly when she said: ‘People are sent to prison to lose their liberty, not their identity.’

You may find more information here:

http://thehoneyballbuzz.com/2012/02/28/campaigning-for-more-immunisation-and-vaccinations/

The Written Declaration needs the support of 377 of Members of the European Parliament to become the EuroParl’s official position.  

I am happy to say that we have almost reached the magic number!

At the end of May’s mini plenary session, 302 MEPs had signed the declaration. With only 76 more to go the President of the Parliament, Martin Schulz, has granted the declaration an extension.

This plenary session is the final opportunity for MEPs to pledge their support to vaccination and immunisation in developing countries by signing Written Declaration 004/2012.

Vaccines and immunisations programmes have a much wider impact than improving the health or indeed saving the life of the children who are inoculated.

By supporting Written Declaration 004/2012 MEPs will help put an end to the terrible situation which exists at present whereby 2.5 million deaths which could have been prevented by vaccination and immunisation occur every year.

Bill Gates has put lots of money where his mouth is on this life-saving campaign. All MEPs have to do is sign their name.

In the Observer Andrew Rawnsley asked us to stop “being beastly to Germans”, as Noel Coward put it.  I can’t say I have much sympathy for Merkel, despite having to watch David Cameron celebrate as Chelsea beat her team Bayern Munich in the Champions League final on Saturday.  It is true though that, with Hollande as France’s new president, Merkel is looking very low on allies among her fellow heads of state.

As Rawnsley says in his article; ‘The American Democrat, British Conservative and French Socialist may not agree on much else, but on this, at least, they are together. It is one second to midnight in the eurozone because a recalcitrant and miserly Germany has refused to step up to its historic responsibility to do what is necessary to save the single currency. If the eurozone implodes, and carries away the global economy with it, the buck will stop in Berlin.’

I think it’s fair to say that that Germany does deserve a big helping of blame for the current state of the eurozone.  Germanyhas repeatedly failed to offer leadership that rises to the scale of the present crisis. When Germanyhas led, it has not always been in a well-judged direction. The austerity programme imposed on the Greeks as the price for continued membership of the euro was too draconian to be implemented in a democracy. The have duly revolted.

So now Obama, Hollande and Cameron get to lay the blame for the current situation at Merkel’s feet.  I can see their point but the idea that Cameron gets to lecture another European leader about a growth agenda is very galling.  Merkel has overseen a German economy that had remained very healthy through out the crisis, whilst Cameron’s government has led us in to further recession.

With all this going on, apart from the Champions League Final, you can’t imagine that Cameron did much relaxing at Camp David, though he has been accused of “chillaxing” too much of weekend, and playing games on his iPad.  He has reacted by saying that he is driven, like Lady Thatcher, to achieve “massive radical and structural reforms”.  I think I prefer the idea of Cameron “chillaxing” than bringing about reforms similar to Tatcher.  I hear that a new version of Angry Birds has just come out, can someone please buy it for him?

Marion was born in Hampshire. Her father, Ralph, was a farmer and her elder brothers, John and Douglas, were also keen show jumpers.  Marion began riding at the age of three, learning on a donkey, but it was in 1960 when her father imported Stroller, an eight-year-old pony, from Ireland. At the age of 16 Marion was coming to the end of her junior career and her father wanted to replace Stroller with a horse, as was customary.   Marion was not willing to let him go though, and continued showing on the pony.

This proved to be a shrewd move as her partnership with Stroller proved to be a very successful one. In her second season as a senior Marion won the Queen Elizabeth II Cup—a former international ladies class event—that took place at the Royal International Horse Show. That year she won three Nations Cup events, helping to win the Presidents Cup.

In 1964 Marion won the Hickstead Derby Trial and placed second to Seamus Hayes in the Hickstead Derby itself. The following year Marion rode Stroller to a gold medal in the ladies World Championship at Hickstead.

From there Marion went on to compete at the 1968 Summer Olympics in both the team and the individual jumping events. It was in the individual jumping that she won a silver medal, something that not many had expected her to do.  She triumphantly returned from Mexico to win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year and Stroller became somewhat of a celebrity himself.

Born on 12 June 1965, she is now married to former Olympic silver medallist Graham Fletcher. They have two sons, William and Oliver, and run a yard near Wantage in Oxon.

Tina began her riding career in the Pony Club at the age of four and was very successful throughout the 1990s, winning the National Grade C Championship at Horse Of The Year Show in 1996 with her horse Sparticus II and then had a repeat victory the following year with McCoist.

Having regularly represented Britain in nations cup competitions during her career, Tina is now back competing at the highest level with a stable of top class horses.

Tina has won The Queen Elizabeth II Cup three times (1992, 1993, 2007) and narrowly missed out on becoming the first lady to win the Hickstead Jumping Derby since 1973 when riding Promised Land in a tense jump-off against Guy Williams in 2010.

She achieved her “lifetime ambition” in 2011 when Promised Land jumped a second clear round in the Hickstead Jumping Derby in succession to lift the famous Boomerang Trophy.

She may not go in to this summer’s events as the favourite but her skills and experience should give everyone reason to be hopeful.

The European Commission’s has recently released a Communication on online safety that includes a road map for action over the next few years.  The Communication seeks to give children the digital skills and tools they need to benefit fully and safely from the digital world.  It plans to do this by getting the Commission, Member States and the online industry to get together on various proposals that would “build up the market for interactive, creative and educational content online”. (Read the full communication here)

The computer and mobile phone industry was well represented as were NGOs and policy makers. All sides were in general agreement that the  European Commission’s proposal was a positive development in tackling this important issue. While I believe that what the Commission is proposing is encouraging, I remain uncertain as to whether it will be enough.  The Commission clearly wants industry to regulate itself, only stepping in with legislation when it fails to do so.  Although I heard a number of very promising things from the various people from the industry who were there, I still feel there is room for the Commission and indeed the European Parliament to get involved.

My main area of concern is that the varying approaches across the EU mean that children have different levels of empowerment and protection online.  The European Union has meant that our national borders have become, at the very least, less rigid, and the internet completely ignores them.  That is why I support my colleague Silvia Costa’s suggestion in her recent report on this subject for a single framework directive on the rights of minors in the digital world.

We will never be able to completely guarantee the safety of children, either online or out in the world, but we should set a standard across the EU the member states and the internet and mobile technology industry have to abide by.