TORIES VOTE ANTI-WOMEN AGAIN

The Tories are at it again, abstaining on votes in the European Parliament which will have a profoundly beneficial impact on women's lives.

A report went through today on the situation of fundamental rights in the European Union 2004 - 2007. Written by Italian Communist, Giusto Catania, the report looked at all aspects of the European Declaration of Fundamental Rights.

Yet this was not good enough for the British Tories, some of whom abstained on two crucial votes on women.

Beazley, Bushill-Matthews, Deva, Kirkhope, McMillan-Scott, Stevenson, Sturdy and Tannock would only accept the paragraph below if all references to sexual and reproductive health (the italicised section) were deleted:

"Stresses the need to raise public awareness of the right to reproductive and sexual health, and calls on the Member States to ensure that women can fully enjoy these rights, to put in place appropriate sex education, information and confidential advisory services,
and to facilitate access to contraception in order to prevent all unwanted pregnancies and illegal and high-risk abortions, and to combat the practice of female genital mutilation"

The other Tories abstained, with only Atkins, Karim and Purvis accepting the complete paragraph.

The other significant paragraph was:

"Stresses that ethnic minority women should be ensured access to public funds, irrespective of their legal status, to enable them to access safe, equal, culturally sensitive health services and rights, in particular sexual and reproductive health and rights; a European legal framework to ensure the physical integrity of young girls from Female Genital Mutilation should be adopted "

Only Purvis accepted this complete paragraph. All other Tories either abstained or voted against the complete text, objecting to the section highlighted above.

Interesting that this week it was only men who were representing the Conservative Party in Europe.

EUROPEAN ENERGY

I spent most of this morning in Industry Committee where MEPs were voting on several key pieces of environmental legislation. The reports were on extending the European emissions trading system (known as ETS); on carbon capture and storage (CCS); and on renewable energy.
As the Industry Committee is one of the big legislative committees, I normally get a huge amount of lobbying on most reports - but never more so than on environmental issues.

The votes went well and there was pretty good agreement between many of the political groups. The committee supported keeping the 20% target for renewable energy by 2020 and also adopted strict sustainability criteria for the use of biofuels. The Socialists, Liberals and Greens also won a review clause on the use of renewables - this means an assessment of the impacts of renewable transport fuels on food and feed production before 2014.

The British Tories frequently talk about renegotiating the UK's membership of the European Union, indeed many Tory MEPs think we should pull out of the EU altogether. If the Tories think we can tackle climate change without any cooperation at EU level, they must be living on another planet. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why the Swedish green party are becoming more pro-European.

These are big, heavyweight reports that will have a real impact on the energy sector and on helping Europe meet its targets towards cutting CO2 emissions. You just have to look at the number of lobbyists and NGOs packing the committee room to see that the decisions MEPs take have a real impact on environmental legislation. If there was nothing at stake, the lobbyists wouldn't be interested.

These reports have now passed through the committee stage. There will soon be further negotiations between Parliament and the European Commission and Council before a final vote is taken at a full sitting of the Parliament. Don't expect the lobbyists to go away any time soon!

MEPs EMPLOYMENT OF FAMILY MEMBERS

Tory MP Derek Conway was recently exposed for employing his two sons in his office while they were at university and working elsewhere. Allegedly neither of them actually did any work for their father as their allegiances were somewhere else. Although Conway denied this, he will not stand again for the House of Commons at the next general election.

Yesterday the European Parliament voted to ban MEPs employing their relatives. I was one of the large parliamentary majority who supported this measure.

Our allowances and expenses are rightly being closely scrutinised. It is important that you as taxpayers know what we receive and how we spend it.