Council of Europe: Local and Regional Democracy

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate. It is always an education as well as a pleasure to listen to the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. This was true on this occasion as it has been on other occasions when I have heard him speak in this House. I join my colleague, my noble friend Lord Kirkhill, in commending him for his work in the Council of Europe.

The Council of Europe is one of the great achievements of the post-war settlement. It was the first immediate product of Churchill’s great call for Europe to unite. We have had many references to Churchill in the discussion tonight. “Europe unite” is still a very relevant call, not on the basis of conquest, as people such as Hitler and Napoleon had tried, but on the basis of democracy and human rights. In that cause, the Council of Europe has played a vital role. I wish the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, well in her new role at the Council. Strasbourg is a lovely place to go to, but this is also a very important role, as I think several speakers tonight have demonstrated.

The Council of Europe has gone through several cycles in its life. It was very important right at the start, in the post-war era, then lost importance with the process of European integration through the coal and steel community and then the European Community. At that time a lot of cynics talked about it as a talking shop for superannuated politicians, and like all international organisations there are always problems of efficiency in the way they are run.

The Council never lost its relevance, particularly because of the convention and the European Court of Human Rights. It is good that all we have heard in this debate is praise for this role. So often in our national life, all we get are brickbats thrown at us. It is important that while there is always a case for looking at how we can do things better and reform them, the essential principles are vital for the future.

As my noble friend Lord Kirkhill reminded us, in the period when communism was beginning to collapse and Gorbachev made his great speech about the Council of Europe being Europe’s common home—incidentally, I do not think my noble friend’s speech was the speech of a man who does not have a lot more speeches to make in this House; it was a wonderful speech to listen to—that was a turning point in the Council’s life. It had a very important role post the fall of communism. I saw it when I was an adviser at No. 10 and went to the Baltic states and saw the vital role that the Council of Europe was playing in helping the Russian minorities in Latvia and Estonia to establish their human rights. Without the Council’s intervention, that would have been much more difficult.

With the enlargement of the European Union, there are questions about what the Council’s role now is. Of course, even with an enlarged EU, there is still a lot of Europe beyond the Council, and therefore it has an important and crucial role for the future. My noble friend Lord Judd reminded us—this is relevant to the post-communist world in that part of the globe—that democracy is not just about holding elections but about human rights and the rule of law. As part of that, the promotion of local government and local democracy is crucial.

In many of these countries, local government is seen not as a democratic organ but as an instrument of the central state—an instrument of central administration to keep control, to sustain a political machine with jobs and favours, and to make sure that, when the elections come round, they go the right way. I saw that at first hand in some of the countries that I visited a decade or so ago.

We have to be insistent that local government is not administration; it is about democracy and about communities deciding their future for themselves. Sometimes, to be frank, I think we should remember that in our own country as well. Democracy is not just about majority rule. It is important that the protection of minorities is pursued. On a visit to Ukraine, I saw the way in which the Tartars are treated in the Crimea. It is very important that these minorities are protected.

I wish to make a couple of points on what noble Lords have said and I should like the Minister to expand on them. What is her view of what my noble friend Lord Judd said in his eloquent speech about the role of the Council of Europe in the North Caucasus?

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, made a very interesting speech, with which I totally agreed. I endorse his compliments on Keith Whitmore’s role but I think that the rest of his speech is for another day.

My noble friend Lord Kirkhill made an important point about the Council of Europe and the Maghreb. This will be one of the biggest challenges facing Europe in the future. The question is: what relationship could we have with those states?

The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, posed questions about the implementation of the Chavez report, about whether the way in which the Council operates at present is internally coherent, and about promoting the work of bilateral exchanges. Those seem to be very relevant questions.

At the end of the debate, we heard from my noble friend Lord Prescott about the real value of what the Council does. I suppose that its real value can be seen in situations such as that in Armenia, with my noble friend turning up on the doorstep to make sure that things do not go too awry. I do not mean that as a joke; I mean it seriously. That is one of the Council’s values—that people of great distinction can give advice and hold people to the standards that they say they adhere to. That is absolutely crucial.

This has been an excellent debate, and we look forward to the Minister’s reply.