SIR, If anyone reading this doesn't pay much attention to politics I humbly suggest that perhaps it's time you did. This week David Cameron broke a promise to his own party that they could have a vote on the European Arrest Warrant. Now to understand the fuss about that and how it affects you, you first have to understand the unimprovable English invention known as Habeas Corpus, literally translated as 'having the body.' Habeas Corpus was first recorded in 1305 when it was noted that "The King is at all times entitled to have an account of why the liberty of any of his subjects is restrained, wherever that restraint may be inflicted." In other words his subjects could no longer be arbitrarily imprisoned or held incommunicado. Then, as now, the custodian was required to present themselves before a judge and show that they were acting lawfully and had a justification for holding the prisoner. Now, the European Arrest Warrant blows all that away. Thanks to your elected government you, dear reader, can be carted off to a foreign prison without anything approaching a fuss. Under the framework decision, member states are precluded from refusing the surrender of their own nationals even if the alleged offence is not a crime within the scope of its own law. This has already resulted in many cases of serious injustice. Perhaps the most common is people facing long periods in detention in foreign jails while waiting for a trial to commence, or even for a charge to be laid. When the British people voted to join the common market in 1975 I doubt they imagined the price would be the sweeping away of 700 years of justice and that their own liberty would be at the whim of foreign judges. The first duty of a government is the protection of its own citizens. Last Monday David Cameron left a banquet to ensure that principle was broken. I hope the voters of Rochester and Strood (and Monmouthshire next May) tell him exactly what they think of that. Gareth Dunn (Monmouth)