Shame that a couple of Labour MPs, who lost their ministerial jobs several years ago and are no doubt disappointed at not returning to ministerial office under Gordon Brown, have sought to embarrass him by calling for a referendum on the proposed EU Reform Treaty.

They made their calls in the Eurosceptic Tory press (Frank Field in the Sun and Gisela Stuart in the Sunday Telegraph), knowing that, there at least, they would obtain a headline or two. I somehow doubt Gordon will be impressed by such disloyal tactics, but there is always a danger that it might influence the odd party member, especially if they believe the nonsense that they wrote on the subject, which could well have been drafted for them by Bill Cash or UKIP. Frank Field even tells the outright lie that the new treaty would mean Britain giving up its seat at the UN Security Council.

An interesting pamphlet, prepared by a group of academics, chaired by Professor Jo Shaw of Edinburgh University (and formerly of Leeds) looking at EU cooperation in the field of Justice & Home Affairs, came across my desk today. In its conclusions is a comment which could apply generally to some British attitudes to the EU. Referring to the advocates of retaining vetoes on EU decisions, it says they give the impression of "European partners apparently eager to legislate against British interests wherever the national veto is lost. In fact, the UK is often a quiet champion of law-making in JHA and in many cases stands to benefit from the greater ease of decision-making brought by qualified majority voting."

So, after three years of trying to dodge the Crown Prosecution Service by spuriously claiming immunity as an MEP, Ashley Mote finally appeared in court to face charges of multiple benefit fraud.

It was disappointing to see that elements of the press chose to cover the story without mentioning that Mote was elected as UKIP and spends most of his time hypocritically denouncing the EU as corrupt. Instead, Eurosceptic newspapers turned a story about an opponent of the EU into an anti-EU story, with headlines such as "£70,000 MEP con" and "MEP fleeces taxpayers", trying to use Mote's behaviour to bring all MEPs into disrepute.

(Incidentally, Mote is not the only MEP elected on the UKIP ticket to face investigation for misappropriation of public money. His former UKIP colleague Tom Wise is under investigation for allegedly misappropriating public monies.)

At the start of this year, Mr Mote was one of the founding members of the neo-fascist Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty group in the European Parliament (which unites Mussolini's granddaughter and Jean Marie Le Pen's National Front). Mr Mote's brass neck also extended to giving 'evidence' to a House of Lords enquiry into the EU's financial management in 2006.

Let's hope that Mr Mote's case is swiftly resolved and that other MEPs are not tarred by his brush.

I welcome the government’s White Paper on the proposed Reform Treaty, which sets out with admirable clarity the issues involved. Click here to read it.

David Cameron's desperate calls for a referendum on the Reform Treaty have been dealt another blow.

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who launched the Movement for European Reform with Cameron this year, and whose Civic Democrat Party is one of the parties with whom Cameron plans to set up a break-away party from the EPP in the European Parliament, has said that the proposed treaty is not significant enough to require a referendum.

Topolanek told the Czech Senate last week that the planned reform of the EU institutions did not create any new framework or powers for the EU, but only modified the existing treaties. He added that a referendum on the new Treaty would be "impractical" and would see the Czech Republic marginalised from the mainstream of the EU.

The fact that even Czech eurosceptics are happy with the Reform Treaty again demonstrates just how extreme the Tories still are on Europe.

I have welcomed an initiative by the European Union to introduce a new, and much needed, common missing children hotline.

The new EU hotline number 116-000 would be free of charge and would be operational in all of the 27 states of the EU. This would mean that should a child go missing in any one of the member states, parents can be reassured that a child may phone this number irrespective of their location and access people who could help to locate them.

My Labour colleagues and I fully support such a measure, but it would reassuring to know that this hotline would be up and running soon, now that the summer holidays have started, as so many families will be taking holidays within Europe. It would be an additional help for the well-being of our children.

The expansion of the EU to incorporate 27 countries, with the free movement of persons throughout most of the internal borders, has meant that the issue of missing children within Europe is frequently a trans-border phenomenon which is in need of a co-ordinated Europe-wide response.

The Telegraph and the Mail claim today that the BBC is to investigate "allegations that the Radio Four 'Today' programme is biased in favour of the European Union"! That will be news to most objective observers, as Radio 4 is widely held to be a bastion of euroscepticism. This is clearly an attempt by the eurosceptics to bounce the BBC into adopting a more eurosceptic position. They are of course, irritated that in the main, the BBC is normally a source of factual and objective information and does not come out with a constant one-sided diatribe against the EU that they would like.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch, a UKIP member, has apparently claimed that only one interviewee in five supports British withdrawal from the European Union. I suppose he will claim that BBC coverage of Westminster is equally biased as only a minority of interviewees support the break-up of the United Kingdom. Come to think of it, 'flat-earthers' don't seem to get anything like 50% of the air-time either.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of going to the wedding in York of Toby and Claire. Toby Wardman used to work for me at the time when I started this blog (I was then the first MEP to have a blog) and he also did sterling work in improving my website. As he and many of his friends are musically talented, the wedding was a feast for the ears, and the party at the National Railway Museum afterwards was great fun. As with many weddings of young people nowadays, people had travelled from all over Europe to be there.

The EU’s Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini has sent a survey to the EU capitals asking them how they deal with violent radical interpretations of Islam so ideas can be pooled and methods shared. This was in response to the failed car-bomb attempts at London and Glasgow. The 18-question survey asks what policies are being used by EU member states to ensure that education establishments are not vulnerable to radical interpretations of Islam, what policies are adopted on funding and supervision of religious schools and also asks how EU member states are trying to diminish the threat of a radical having access to any form of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear scientific knowledge.

EU states are expected to reply by the end of September and the answers will then feed into a Commission document, due for publication in 2008, which will then help form an EU-wide strategy on violent radicalisation.

This is a great opportunity for the UK to have a huge influence on an EU initiative that could bring so many benefits home. The UK is one of the main targets of Islamist terrorism in Europe, and therefore, has the a lot to gain from an EU-wide strategy to combat radical Islam.

It also highlights why we are fully-fledged members of the EU, and serves as a warning to those like UKIP who would withdraw us from the EU into a simple trade association. This is a policy area where the UK needs to have influence. The terrorists that attacked the United States on September 11th were part of what was called the “Hamburg cell” in Germany. Who is to say that terrorist cells hidden away in cities across the EU are not planning attacks on UK soil? If we want fellow EU governments to take similar measures to the UK in order to combat this threat, then we can use the EU framework to achieve this.

Equally, Britain can underline that the majority of Muslims are, of course, not radical or violent and highlight its experience in integrating Muslims successfully into our diverse society.

Click here to read what I said in the parliamentary debate on the proposed Reform Treaty today

A paper published by the European Commission a couple of weeks ago set out ideas that could make it easier for European political parties to increase their profile.

Despite the fact that, in the European Parliament, Labour members sit in the Party of European Socialists, the Tories (for the moment at least) in the European People's Party and the Liberal Democrats in the Alliance of Liberal Democrat and Reform Parties, when it comes to European election campaigns, their respective parties do little more than co-ordinate national campaigns. European elections tend to be fought as 27 different national campaigns dominated by the state of domestic politics.

This is slightly anomalous. Broadly speaking, the European Parliament gives the EU ideological/political pluralism, while national interests represented by national governments in the Council of Ministers. Most European issues are in fact political rather than national choices, such as whether you want higher environmental standards, but at greater costs, or not. There are people on both sides of the argument in every country. They are represented in the Parliament, but not reflected in the Council where each country is represented only by the government party.

The new rules would allow and indeed help Europe-wide parties to campaign and also to establish political foundations to encourage debates and political research.

One of the provisions of the proposed Reform Treaty is the election of the Commission president by the European Parliament. This has given rise to calls from some quarters that the European parties should nominate their own candidates for President. This would add to the profile of the elections and the European parties, as well as provide a more visible link between the election results and the choice of Europe's chief executive.

Many feel that this could be used as a tool to increase political participation and voter turn-out as well as generate a better understanding of the working of the EU.

Above is my YouTube debut! Apologies for the strobing on my jacket, I can assure Eurosceptics it is not an attempt to brainwash them! You can also sign up to receive each new YouTube post I make by visiting here and clicking subscribe. Happy viewing.

Two weeks ago the Sun was battling to save Britain from surrender to Brussels, yet this week, along with the Daily Mail and Yorkshire Post, they are hailing proposed new Europe-wide regulations on women’s clothes sizes.

Indeed Sun fashion editor Erica Davies, presumably tapping away in a quiet corner of the office hidden from the prying eyes of avowed Europe-hater George Pascoe-Watson, declares it is “the news every seasoned shopper has been waiting for”.

The Daily Mail headline reveals there will soon be a “dress size system that will really measure up” and happily acknowledges that the European Committee for Standarisation is responsible, without a diatribe following swiftly after.

The Sun’s article is perhaps not that surprising as its black and white attitude to everything means it will eventually come down in favour of Europe, especially on what is a sensible answer to on an issue which many women have found particularly irritating. But it is the Daily Mail that really impress, simply because their story informs people neutrally about what is planned. There is no hint of bias or mention of “creeping red tape” just a factually accurate story on something that will have a small but positive effect on people’s lives!

As for the actual story itself, the proposed regulations will end respective manufacturers sizing their clothes on their own terms. Currently a women’s size 12 in one store can be a size 14 in another and a 10 in another, meaning people have very little idea what size they actually are. The new regulations will mean clothes are labelled in actual measurements of wastes, hips and busts Europe-wide so people will know what size they are whether they are in Meadowhall or Madrid.

Of course, whether the measurements should be imperial or metric is a debate for another day! A bit contentious that one apparently.

Last month the European Parliament approved the applications of Malta and Cyprus to join the euro. The steadily growing number of countries adopting the single currency makes Britain’s position outside the euro look increasingly conspicuous.

A series of multinationals, including Ford, Toyota, Honda and Unilever have all expressed concern about the effect of Britain's non-entry on their ability to invest and maintain their manufacturing bases in Britain. Indeed, a month ago the chief executive of Honda, Takeo Fukai, told the Financial Times that for Honda, Britain's apparent reluctance to join the euro meant that the company had "no plans to expand". However, in the same breath he added that "we may change our minds if Britain were to join". Meanwhile, Honda's rival Nissan has often said that Britain staying out of the euro threatens jobs at its Sunderland plant.

Companies with UK bases that sell good to the EU have to bear hedging and conversion costs of currency that our German, French, Dutch, Irish etc. competitors don't, leaving the latter with a clear advantage.

Moreover, the euro is rapidly establishing itself as the world’s strongest currency and has now displaced the US dollar as the main denomination for world trade, accounting for 45% of the global market compared to 37% for the dollar. Indeed, it is likely that world commodity prices will soon be denominated in euros rather than dollars. It is becoming increasingly clear that for the UK, staying out of the euro means being economically hamstrung.

Headlines galore for the EU after the press saw the Commission's You Tube video promoting European cinema, which features a series of sex scenes from award-winning films with the tag line “Let's come together”.

Predictably the League of Polish Families is outraged (when are they not outraged?), while Godfrey Bloom, having made himself the Parliament's go-to man for sex-related stories, just as predictably responded with: “The EU has been screwing Britain for the past 30 years.”

Though if Godfrey, and everyone else advocating British withdrawal (ahem) from the EU, got their way the video would have featured a series of people sat on their bed on their own. Not so splendid isolation!

Some people have even suggested the video was a tad conservative. After all 27 countries are now in the EU and I couldn’t count more than two people in one scene at a time.

The video was posted on the EU’s own You Tube channel EUtube, available online at http://www.youtube.com/EUtube

Bill Cash MP - whose sole activity in the House of Commons seems to be to campaign against everything to do with Europe - has had some success on the Conservative benches with his plan for a Bill that would oblige British courts to give primacy to British statutes over European law whenever there may be conflict between the two.

No doubt this is appealing to those who do not give much thought to the issues involved. But its effect would be to undermine the primacy of European law, which is one of the foundations of the European legal system.

The reason for the primacy of European law is that there is actually not much point in us agreeing with other countries on common rules if each country is then free to ignore them. What would be the point?

The whole purpose of having common rules for the common market or common environmental standards is that we all live up to what we agree in the European context. Divergent national rules would soon end the single market which successive British governments have proclaimed to be vital to our prosperity. Allowing countries to ignore agreed environmental standards and free-ride on the efforts of others is also not something to commend.

Nor should we forget that we rely on the primacy of European law in other countries. Britain won its our court case against France over its ban on British beef thanks to the primacy of European law. If French law had primacy, then they could have continued to ban our beef in complete violation of the rules we had agreed for the common market.

It is curious to see Tony Blair lambasted in Conservative and UKIP circles for having "sold out to Europe". In much of the rest of Europe he is considered to have done precisely the opposite!

To read the Belgian or Italian press, for instance, you would have thought that Blair had single-handedly prevented the rest of Europe from carrying out the modest reforms it sought to the current EU system - or where he was unable to do so to negotiate instead an opt-out for Britain. Blair is, along with the Dutch, blamed for killing off the notion of an EU constitution. He blocked certain changes from unanimity to qualified majority voting. He has an opt-out of the Charter of Rights and kept Britain out of the euro and Schengen. He even opposed a reference in the treaty to the long standing primacy of EU law. I could go on - and many of the criticisms are unjustified. But they do illustrate how the Eurosceptic attacks on Blair in Britain are, to put it mildly, somewhat one-sided in their analysis.