LAWS should not be made behind closed doors but that is what our ministers do when they get together in Brussels.

Draft EU legislation has to be approved or amended both by the European Parliament and by the Council of Ministers.

But while MEPs meet in public, the ministers debate in secret.

How can they be held to account if no-one knows what they have been saying?

To bring about an improvement all that is needed is a simple change in the standing orders of ministerial meetings.

In pressing for this I have secured not only the backing of the Conservative and Labour leaders in the European Parliament but even that of the UK Independence Party.

In calling for change I have been criticised by some who say nothing that was included within the failed constitutional treaty should be considered now.

Yet I know of no-one who opposed the EU constitution because they wanted to keep secretive law-making.

Britain will hold the presidency of the EU until the end of this year and Foreign Secretary and Blackburn MP Jack Straw is the man who can propose the reform of this arrangement.

Making a change to inject a bit more openness and transparency into the law-making process would surely be a worthwhile achievement.

CHRIS DAVIES, Liberal Democrat MEP for the North West.