Council of Europe

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I crave the indulgence of the House in speaking for a moment in the gap to bring to your Lordships’ attention a disturbing development of which I learnt only last night. I apologise to the Minister for the fact that I missed the first few minutes of his speech.

Among the many valuable things that the Council of Europe does, one of the most valuable is its support for a Conference of International Non-Governmental Organisations enjoying participatory status with the Council of Europe. This conference is one of the four pillars of the Council of Europe whose role is to strengthen respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law throughout Europe—something that has always been at the heart of British foreign policy. Council Resolution (2003)8 bestowed participatory status on selected international NGOs in recognition of the critical role that they can play in fostering dialogue between civil society and the other Council institutions, and in promoting participatory democracy and fundamental rights in member states—in forwarding the core work of the Council of Europe, in other words, to which many other noble Lords have attested.

The conference has taken a particular interest in the rights of disabled people, which is how I come to know about it. I am president of the European Blind Union, which is a member of the conference and thus has participatory status with the Council. I declare my interest accordingly.

The Council is distinct in granting participatory status to the NGO community. This has given civil society a voice and a stake in Europe—something which should be seen as being of prime importance at a time when we are all concerned about democratic deficits in Europe. However, we have just learnt that the Council is now proposing major cuts in the conference’s budget, which would significantly erode its effectiveness, if not neuter it altogether. The conference’s budget for 2010 is a mere 0.52 per cent of the total budget of the Council of Europe. That proposed for 2011 foresees a reduction in excess of 50 per cent but could, we are told, reach 80 per cent. Such a saving would be just a drop in the ocean so far as concerns the Council of Europe, but it would surely spell the end of the crucial work of the Conference of International NGOs in contributing to the effective implementation of Council programmes and in drawing up and implementing legal instruments which ensure the protection of human rights, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter, the convention on combating the trafficking of human beings and the proposed convention on combating violence against women.

In 2009, the Committee of Ministers declared that one of its priorities was,

“to develop, with the assistance of the Conference of International Non-Governmental Organizations, interaction with civil society, whose grassroots work we salute”.

Given that the Council states that its proposals for reform are aimed at refocusing around its fundamental values of democracy, human rights, the rule of law and areas in which it enjoys a real comparative advantage in doing what others are not able to do, the effective disablement of the Conference of International NGOs through the proposed cuts would surely be counterproductive. The Council’s budget will be discussed and adopted by the Committee of Ministers next week, and I hope very much that the Minister will do whatever he can, through the Government’s representation on the Council of Ministers, to see that this disastrous and self-defeating cut is significantly attenuated, if it cannot be wholly reversed.