European Convention on Human Rights: 75th Anniversary

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on his excellent opening to this very important debate.

When Ernest Davies, the Member of Parliament, signed the convention on behalf of the Labour Government in 1950, in Rome, he was not carving a monument in stone; he was putting his name to a dynamic and living convention. There were 15 signatories and now there are 46, excluding only Belarus and Russia in the European context.

The guide to the European court puts it this way:

“By its case-law the Court has extended the rights set out in the Convention so that its provisions apply today to situations that were totally unforeseeable and unimaginable at the time it was first adopted … new technologies, bioethics … the environment. The Convention also applies to societal or sensitive questions relating … to terrorism or migration … abortion, assisted suicide, body searches, domestic slavery, adoption by homosexuals, the wearing of religious symbols … the protection of journalists’ sources, or the retention of DNA data”.


What happens where there is no European convention?

Last week, in the United States, hundreds of Venezuelans were shipped to El Salvador. They were treated in an inhuman and degrading manner that would contravene Article 3 of the European convention. They were shackled, contravening Article 5, without any form of trial, contravening Article 6, and with no ability to complain to a court of the violation of their rights, contravening Article 13. The USA is a country which bows the knee to Magna Carta and the rule of law, but the US federal judge who sought to block this move has been ignored. “Oopsie, too late!”, said the President of El Salvador, pocketing the millions of dollars paid to his country.

Where have we seen this behaviour before? In Nazi Germany, the crimes of which motivated European countries to come together to sign the convention. There is a suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, and others that the UK should withdraw and write its own, presumably on the Trumpian model.

There is good news. The Human Rights Act came into force in the year 2000. Since then, there have been 245 judgments against the UK, finding at least one violation of the convention. But the number of cases has steadily declined, from 18 per year at the beginning to just two in 2022. The number of applications, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, pointed out, against the UK is now the lowest per capita of all European states. We have succeeded in bringing the convention home, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, pointed out, so that our own courts can and do apply its provisions in appropriate cases.

There are three reasons. First, the Human Rights Act creates a legal obligation for all public bodies, including the police, hospitals, care homes and local councils, to protect rights in all their decisions and actions, meaning that people’s rights are less likely to be breached in the first place. Secondly, United Kingdom courts are now the first port of call for any human rights claimant, and United Kingdom judges consider human rights more explicitly and intensively than they could before. Thirdly, the European court is much more likely today, in considering applications from this country, to follow the reasoning and conclusions of our courts and the decisions of our public authorities. It respects our judges and the way in which the Human Rights Act is applied. Ernest Davies, Ernie Bevin and Clement Attlee were right to feel proud of what they had done.

Rules-based International Order

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Northover not just on securing this debate but on the width and vision expressed in her remarks.

The news from the Middle East gives some relief to Israel and respite to Gaza, but, after conflict, there must be accountability if a rules-based international order is to survive. As a boy, I saw the scenes from Belsen and I felt relief when the war ended. Vital to the durability of peace was Nuremberg, the tribunal which brought the leaders responsible for the world war and the Holocaust to account.

The Draft Code of Offences against Peace and the Security of Mankind was drawn up under the auspices of the United Nations. Decades later, that code was applied in separate international tribunals for Rwanda, for the former Yugoslavia and for Sierra Leone. American judges, among others, shaped the jurisprudence of international criminal law. American lawyers served as senior prosecutors and defence counsel.

In 1998, it was a delegation from the United States which played a key role in negotiating the Rome statute and its rules, establishing the International Criminal Court. Some 122 countries, including the United Kingdom, voted for the Rome treaty and seven, including the United States, China and Israel, voted against. In 2000, President Clinton, despite that contrary vote, signed the Rome treaty for the United States and said that

“we wish to remain engaged in making the ICC an instrument of impartial and effective justice in the years to come”.

He did not, however, submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification. Jesse Helms, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proclaimed it “dead in the water”, and George W Bush, on coming into office, agreed.

Last November, warrants were issued by the ICC for the arrest of the Israeli Prime Minister and his former Defence Minister, together with three now-deceased leaders of Hamas. There must be other Hamas leaders in the frame for their unprovoked slaughter in October 2023. Hamas puts the figure of deaths in Gaza at over 46,000 in 14 months; the Lancet last week reported 64,260 deaths in nine months. To put those figures in perspective, the number of US military killed in the Korean War over a period of three years was 36,516. The impressive Vietnam War memorial in Washington carries 58,320 names from eight years of US involvement in that conflict. We can see how that compares with the deaths in Gaza.

Can Hamas truly justify its savage attacks? Were the retaliatory deaths inflicted by Israel in Gaza proportionate self-defence? Who will decide? I know from experience, and respect, the Israeli system of military justice. I have no reason to conclude that Israel’s Military Advocate General is either unwilling or unable to conduct the necessary investigations and criminal proceedings, if warranted, into battlefield crimes by IDF forces. But Mr Netanyahu, as Prime Minister, is not subject to the military system of justice in Israel.

In his opening in the Nuremberg trials in 1947, the American Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, the lead prosecutor, said in a blazing speech:

“The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched.”


The International Criminal Court has the benefit of the procedures and safeguards set out in its charter, with the support of a vast majority of the world’s nations. It is a fair and impartial court, not under-resourced for its output. It is an important part of the architecture of the world order.

However, a Bill passed in the United States House of Representatives just last week instructs the US President to freeze property assets and deny visas to any foreigners who materially or financially contribute to the ICC’s efforts to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute a protected person. Protected persons are defined as all current and former military and government officials of the United States—and allies that have not consented to the court’s jurisdiction, such as Israel. Brian Mast, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said:

“America is passing this law because a kangaroo court is seeking to arrest the prime minister of our great ally.”


He accused the ICC of anti-Semitism in prosecuting Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity, in an equivalence with leaders of Hamas. He further said:

“Do not get in the way of America or our allies trying to bring our people home. You will be given no quarter, and again, you will certainly not be welcome on American soil.”


Similarly, Senator John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota and the Majority Leader, referred on the Floor of the Senate to, “the ICC’s rogue actions.”

To categorise the ICC as a kangaroo court and its proceedings as “rogue actions” undermines the rule of law. It casts doubt upon the validity of Nuremberg, the very mechanism that brought justice, if not peace, to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and a durable and lasting settlement in Europe. Will the Minister explicitly tell us what the reaction of His Majesty’s Government is to this pernicious Bill in the House of Representatives and what representations they will make to the US Government about it?