Last month, Cara Mendoza's infants, Alex and Eva, were taken illegally by their father from Rotherham to California.

And it has been reported that hundreds of Asian girls are living in forced marriages after disappearing from Yorkshire schools, with the education authorities powerless to stop this.

In each case, the missing children procedures followed by the police and by other public authorities pose questions that need urgent answers.

I have dealt with many tug-of-love cases but when my constituent Jessica, eight, wanted to stay with her mum, Stacey, 30, in Scunthorpe, the High Court in London tried to send her back to her dad, Victor, 58, a Benidorm club owner. The Spaniard had UK legal aid, his British daughter did not.

We won in the end, but only because my friend, Lord Stockton, financed
the appeal.

As a father and grandfather, I can imagine the anguish caused to families and friends – and to the children.

One couple who want answers are Gerry and Kate McCann, who have been studying best practice in the United States, internationally acknowledged as the world leader in recovering missing children.

Since 2003, nearly 400 abducted children in America have been recovered, and now Belgium and France have adopted the American approach. I saw it in France recently and it is impressive. In the US, 80 per cent of abducted children are recovered within the crucial first 72 hours.

I am sponsoring the McCanns' visit to the European Parliament where they will ask MEPs to push for EU governments to set up a Missing Child hotline, an Amber Alert system, and a European child resource and policy unit.

The Amber Alert system in the US (named after a nine-year-old who was killed by her abductor) operates like a Severe Weather Warning.

In France, a national scheme has been in place since 2006.
Ex-pat Gwyneth Cairns told the BBC: "As a Brit living in France, I have been impressed by the system which is in place over here. If a child is missing in suspicious circumstances, messages are diffused at regular intervals on the radio, the television and on motorway message boards, encouraging everyone to
be alert."

The French "Alerte enlèvement" system, in the handful of cases it has been used, has been 100 per cent successful. Once the local police or procurator decide on an alert, a centre in the Ministry of Justice, in Paris, activates it within 30 minutes. Belgium has a similar system.

Children go missing for many reasons. The Children's Society estimate that 130,000in the UK run away each year, are ejected from home, get abducted or worse, injured or killed.

Unfortunately, we have no agreement on how to define missing children. The police make no distinction between missing adults or children and, despite a guidance note in 2005, each force operates a different system. Amber Alert statistics show that, in two-thirds of cases, a family member is the abductor.

In the Mendoza "tug-of-love" case, the children, aged eight and 19 months, were taken by their father from Rotherham to America on March 8, and the anguished mother was interviewed by two trainee policemen who were unaware that recovery procedures – based on the international Hague Convention – could have been started immediately.

The European Commission has arranged an emergency number for missing children – 116 000 – but only four countries have so far adopted it, not the UK. Brussels has been working on
a strategy for the rights of the child since 2006, including a focus on the increasing number of cross-frontier marriages
and break-ups.

Each year, more than 400 children are taken illegally by a parent into or out of the UK, a quarter involving another EU country, says the tug-of-love charity Reunite.

Gerry and Kate want a European children centre – like the one in Washington – to bring together governments, the police and the voluntary sector to work on a united front and eliminate layers of frustrating bureaucracy and duplication of work.

Such a centre would provide a single focal point for data collection, drafting of policies and public communication on all aspects of policy.

The McCanns tell me that the least they can do is ask for some political will. They have a very impressive list of backers.

When Margaret Thatcher introduced the Children Act – probably the most far-reaching and progressive in Europe – it made the interests of the child paramount, gave a child the right to be heard in the UK courts and to independent legal representation. These are concepts I am trying to introduce across the EU.

As I said a few months ago, in Strasbourg, in a debate on children's rights, a society is judged by how it treats its children. In Europe, we have some way to go.


Edward McMillan-Scott is Conservative MEP for Yorkshire & The Humber and Vice-President of the European Parliament.