GENERALLY I try to focus on our key constituency concerns. A fair share of healthcare, regeneration, more jobs and money.

Yet every now and then something comes along that infuriates me. That leads me to make a more national case for change. European "human rights" and the idea of Europe telling us how to run our criminal law are two such things.

The news that Abu Qatada should be freed on the orders of European Human Rights judges drives any sensible person round the bend.

This is a man who has been banned by the UN and described by a Spanish judge as Bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe. Yet here he is, ordered to be freed to roam our streets and undermine our national security.

There can be no clearer example of why European human rights legislation is complete nonsense. As you can imagine, I gave trenchant comment in the national media.

In a separate move, the EU wants to develop a European criminal law code. Now call me old fashioned, but I think we've done rather well developing our criminal law over the last 1,000 years.

We don't need Euro Crimes, a Euro Prosecutor, Euro Arrest Warrants, a Euro Investigator or Euro Police.

We should cooperate on drug and human trafficking of course. But there is a big difference between cooperation and control.

The first accepts the traditions of nations when it comes to locking up citizens – the second is about having a uniform Euro code.

I don't think that works for us.

We've developed a good criminal code over a long period and the continental criminal system is very different from ours.

So I got together with more than 100 fellow Conservative MPs to support a letter to the national media to underline this position.

Now, you might well say that this is the same old Tories banging on about Europe. Yawn. Not so.

This is not about boring old Europe. This is about keeping a very good system for locking up villains in place. A system that has been carefully developed over a long, long time. A system that works. A system that cages dangerous people like Abu Qatada rather than freeing then to undermine our nation.

That's why we need to protect our system of criminal law.