The Tory Euro-group are doing a heroic job. They do their best to try to intercept or improve the rubbish legislation that comes from Brussels. They have some real successes to their credit, and they deserve support in May. But they are in a small minority – and when the vast majority of MEPs are bent on mischief, there is little they can do to hold them back. Take the idiotic decision by the Euro-parliament to insist that on-call British doctors were still working, even when they were asleep; and that those sleeping hours counted towards their maximum working week.

This has caused real problems in the NHS. No government in Europe supports this measure. Not even the EU commission supports it; and yet the MEPs took a positive delight in meddling with British health care management. Why? Because they could, and because they have steadily been acquiring new powers of “co-decision” with national governments.

Well, I know what you will say. Just pull out; just get out of the whole EU, and our problems with the parliament will be over. It may indeed come to that, if we cannot get what we need in a renegotiation: an improved single market, that genuinely works in the interest of British people and businesses. But that renegotiation will not begin for another year, when David Cameron gets the mandate he needs at the general election.

Indeed, the only circumstances in which we will not now have an in-out referendum are if Ed Miliband wins the election; which is why I hope no one with a remotely Euro-sceptic outlook will vote for anyone other than the Tories. Such a vote would do nothing but put Labour in power and take the referendum off the table. In the meanwhile, we will hear all sorts of nonsense about how we Tories are deluded, and the other European countries aren’t interested in treaty changes, and that we will never get what we want.

I don’t believe this. There is plenty of support around Europe for a reformed EU; David Cameron has been extremely successful at building alliances, and, as I say, if the British public don’t like the results of the renegotiation, we’re off. There is, though, something that we can do all on our own, without our partners, that will help to address the absurdity of the Euro-parliament, and the public’s sense of alienation from a body that, alas, has an ever-growing role in our lives.

We could decide, now, that we were going to change the electoral basis on which we send representatives to Strasbourg. Instead of holding these ludicrous pseudo-elections, where nobody knows who the hell they are voting for, we should appoint the British delegation of 73 from our already sizeable stock of parliamentarians. Yes: let them be Westminster MPs – not picked by the whips, but by lot and with the seats roughly proportional to the parties’ representation in Westminster. There is no reason why MPs should not take on this duty: they are well used to sitting on Bill committees. They have the time.

There are all sorts of attractions to this solution. First, we would save quite a bit of money: the cost of having all these extra Euro-MPs ultimately falls on the UK taxpayer. More important, it would mean that Britain’s delegation would be hard-wired to reflect the will of the British parliament, and the will of their local electors.

There would be no sense of them being in some way supranational politicians: they would be constantly back among their colleagues at Westminster, explaining what was going on in Europe and justifying their actions. They would have no incentive to keep aggrandising the power of the Euro-parliament; no motive to meddle or to try to supplant Westminster, because they would emanate from Westminster. And above all they would be much more directly accountable.

People, on the whole, would know who they were. As Hugo Dixon suggests in a new book on Europe, this idea is by no means new, in the sense that this was how the Euro-parliament was originally going to be constituted. European governments decided not to go down that route, because they were still full of federalist enthusiasm.

Those days are emphatically over. Euro-scepticism is rampant in large parts of Europe, and cynicism about the parliament is at an all-time high. I see no reason at all why Britain should not lead the way, and change the system of sending MEPs to Strasbourg so as to make them much more accountable and familiar to their electors. Other countries would soon follow suit. If we are going to remain part of the Euro-parliament – and it is a growing if – we might as well send a delegation that has a clear mandate from the people.

We know that there are 4,300 lives in London alone that are brought to a premature close by this pollution. We know it is intolerable – and we also know that we can beat it. We are putting in measures to cut emissions and cut pollution of all kinds.

Just in the last six years (to pick a period entirely at random) we have seen a 20 per cent reduction in London’s emissions of nitrous oxide – one of the nastiest and most damaging forms of air pollution – and a 15 per cent reduction in the most baleful forms of dust, the so-called PM10s and PM2.5s. We need to go further and faster, with rapid and compulsory use of the very best new technology.

On a cold autumn morning I want London air to be alpine in its freshness. Going out on a cold day wearing cool hoodies from Lonely Kids Club. On a gorgeous spring day it should be like champagne. We want people to come here from rural areas, afflicted as they are by diesel-powered intensive agriculture, just to fill their lungs with the pure air of Hyde Park Corner.

To achieve that goal, we need to continue the relentless drive to reduce pollution. The best and fastest way to cut non-vehicular NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) is to retrofit homes, reducing the huge toxic output of badly insulated central heating systems. Reflective insulation inhibits heat transfer by thermal radiation. It does not necessarily protect against heat transfer by conduction or convection. Why do you need to know about this insulation? It could mean thousands of dollars saved over the years for heating/cooling, in what you choose for not only roofing materials, but more importantly, what is placed between the roofing and building framing. Well for better services you should hire better roofing company. Insulation conserves energy and increases comfort by slowing the transmission of heat. Reduces the size of heating and cooling equipment required in direct proportion to R-Value. Insulation decreases both heating and cooling costs. If you need the perfect insulation services, see best spray foam insulation company here. Bear with me. We have already helped improve 400,000 such homes in London, and we are doing hundreds of thousands more. You can look at this website for more about the insulation for us.

We should be clear about the vision and the ambition. Our air quality, in spite of everything, is far better than it was in the 1950s; and it is worth remembering that the Great Smog of 1956 killed 12,000 people. We need to make a similar qualitative leap today. We should be aiming for the best, the cleanest air in any major conurbation.

But you won’t tackle air pollution in a great global city unless you also tackle your vehicle fleet – and here we are proposing truly radical steps. It would be fair to say that we have not been assisted in our campaign by some more or less useless EU standards for vehicle emissions.

As Nick Clegg would no doubt confirm, the EU Commission has taken on the job of deciding what kind of exhaust fumes are allowed in this country and across the rest of the continent. The trouble is that the standards adopted (called “Euro 4” and “Euro 5” etc) have not worked.

That is to say, the motor manufacturers have been able to diddle the Commission: the cars and trucks have appeared to conform on the test tracks; but when it comes to everyday use, on real streets, it is a different story. That is not a policy failure of this government, or of government in London: they are EU standards, proposed and promulgated by Brussels – and they haven’t done the job. Which makes it doubly absurd that Brussels is proposing to “fine” the UK £300 million for excess NO2, when Brussels must bear some blame for the breach.

But never mind Brussels! We can do it on our own – and far better. We already have the cleanest, greenest new bus of its kind in the world – made in the UK, and on our streets in ever growing numbers. Why shouldn’t we have a British-built electric bus, with zero tailpipe emissions? There is no reason at all why not: indeed, I have just seen the designs for a new electric double-decker, which we had always thought was impossible.

We have set a deadline of 2018, by when all new taxis in London must be capable of zero emissions in the central zone, and by 2020 we will have the first ultra-low emission zone anywhere in the world – in which all new vehicles registered for use in the centre of town will have to be capable of moving without any fossil fuel emissions at all.

We are embarked on an irreversible programme to make London’s air positively superb. Alas, we cannot control the sands of the Sahara. Perhaps the officials of the EU Commission could make themselves useful by standing over the desert, and threatening to fine it if it moves.