Council of Europe

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Thursday 8th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I have the privilege of representing the constituency of Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. Although many of my constituents will share concerns about the small boats, which were referred to briefly by my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart), generations of people from all over the world have found refuge in my constituency. In particular, they include a large population of Jewish people, who came to the United Kingdom before the second world war, as the state terror against them was cranked up by the Nazis in Germany. A significant number came following the partition of India. Those people recognised that Europe in general, and the UK in particular, was a beacon of human rights and the rule of law—a place where their lives, businesses and families would be respected. Although I was not a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, that was the reason I took an interest in the Council of Europe during my time in local government, and I served as the Conversative delegation leader at the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe.

I want to share some reflections on that part of the Council of Europe, which is rarely referred to in this Chamber, except in the particular context of its work carrying out election supervision. It has significant impact on the way we manage migration and asylum. It is visible through my membership and that of other Members of the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, which looks at the way the legislation we pass in this Chamber interacts with the European convention on human rights, of which we are a member. I will touch on some of the impacts that the different bodies of the Council of Europe have and consider some developments, such as the implications of the Brighton declaration, that show how that convention and the bodies that form part of the Council of Europe continue to be a work in progress, reflecting the changing world we face today.

I have heard in this Chamber, as reflected in much of the academic coverage of the subject, that there is a good deal of debate about the role in its foundation played by Winston Churchill, after whom buildings in Strasbourg and key Council of Europe premises are named. However, there is little doubt reflected back to me by my constituents who came to the UK in those circumstances that its founding politicians saw a desperate need for this body in the reconstruction of Europe after the second world war.

The aim was to ensure that there was a sufficient body of international jurisprudence to restrain potential abuses of state power, such as those that had been seen in a number of its member states in the run-up to the second world war. That would ensure that in the future no nation fell below that minimum standard, through a process where international law could be invoked. That took place against the background of the global work undertaken by the United Nations.

Following its foundation, the Council of Europe has developed a political sense. A number of Members have spoken from the perspective of their experience of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, but in due course the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe was created and the Council of Ministers was always there as part of the supervisory activity, whereby the Council itself was directly accountable to the Governments of the member states and they had a direct role in supervising decision making.

That has been enormously important, because in many of the debates on, for example, the Illegal Migration Bill and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, both in this Chamber and in the public discourse, we have heard reference to foreign judges and courts and a lack of accountability. The Council of Europe, almost from its inception, has recognised that politics, not just the rule of law, is important in shaping its work. To this day, it remains extremely accountable to and shaped by the view of parliamentarians and the other active parties from the member states.

The role of the judges was referred to during the course of the debates on the Illegal Migration Bill, but it was not mentioned that those judges are elected by the Parliamentary Assembly. Members of this House choose who the judges are going to be, from a shortlist put forward by the Government of the member state. In fact, there is a much higher degree of accountability around the appointment of judges to the court than there is for judges in our own domestic courts here in the United Kingdom. That political relationship is incredibly important.

Then we have to consider the role of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe. The bit that we tend to make reference to, especially when we have debates about emerging situations in countries where there are concerns about whether free and fair elections are taking place, is the role of election monitoring. Our counterparts from local and regional government spend their time checking that those elections are being carried out in a free and fair manner, and also looking at issues such as how positive obligations on public bodies—for example, the duties on local authorities to house people or ensure they have access to education and healthcare—are playing out in practice.

On top of that, we have the Venice Commission, which is the body that looks at setting the international gold standard for the conducts of elections. There was much debate in this Chamber about whether it was appropriate to bring voter ID into the UK system, but it has been recommended by the Venice Commission for some time, as part of the gold standard for ensuring that elections are free and fair. It is standard practice across most member states of the Council of Europe.

I will turn briefly to some of the emerging challenges. A number of Members have made reference to the situation with Russia; I know my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) has done sterling work on that. I served on the Congress during a period when Russia was still an active member of the Council of Europe, which was a good explication of some of the challenges the Council faces. At that stage, Russia had already invaded and annexed Crimea, but was not the only member state of the Council of Europe that, arguably, had invaded and occupied territory of another member state. The challenges were very visible—politicians who were there to represent the interests of their people had to set aside some of those immediate direct international challenges.

It is clear that at the Congress, the Parliamentary Assembly and the organisation in its broadest sense, the changing world, for example the digital environment, introduces new challenges to the way in which the rule of law is enforced. It is only through the willingness of the member states that the principles that underpin the Council of Europe can be upheld. A key point for those who have concerns about the UK’s continued membership, is that, as has already been clearly stated, the number of referrals to the Court from the United Kingdom are exceptionally low, and the number of findings against the United Kingdom is lower still. It is also interesting to note that during its period of membership the largest number of representations from any member country came from Russia. It is very clear that the rule of law has some distance to travel in that country.

I commend the work that about which we have heard from a number of colleagues who serve on the Parliamentary Assembly. I also pay tribute to the work of my former colleagues on the Congress, who have done a tremendous amount to shape both the work and the priorities of the Council of Europe, especially it comes to the rights of refugees, both in the United Kingdom and following their transition from wherever they may have originated to a place of safety elsewhere. It is important that those rights are respected but also managed, and that countries such as Greece, Italy and Turkey—which accommodate millions of refugees at a time when we in the United Kingdom are worrying about tens of thousands at the most—are able to share the challenges that that poses for their communities and the implications for their politics, and also to work with us to find a more functional and effective system of managing the way in which people who are in dire need of help move around the world. As issues such as climate change begin to become a larger factor, we have an opportunity to reflect on how those rights will all play out.

I want to express the pride that I think we all feel in the role that the United Kingdom has played in developing this framework, and in its consistent maintenance and enforcement of the standards of respect for human rights, which have done so much to reduce injustice among the member states and in wider Europe over the years since the second world war. I also want to place on record my personal thanks to some of the UK ambassadors and diplomats who I know are extremely active in Strasbourg, meeting regularly and ensuring that issues that politicians debate perhaps once a session are being managed and the process is being smoothed on a daily basis. In particular, like others, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Henley.

I also thank our counterparts—leaders such as Councillor Kevin Bentley, who leads the local government delegation —whose work behind the scenes, to which we do not often have a chance to pay tribute in the House, addresses our constituents’ need for access to justice when they are abroad. While we in the House can spend a great deal of time arguing about what may in the grand scheme of things be relatively small issues, we have colleagues who are working to ensure that our fellow citizens, in this country and abroad, continue to enjoy their right to life, their right to liberty, their right to a family life, their right to pursue a business, and their right to do all the things that free human beings should be able to do within the context of a legal framework within which it can be ensured that no one infringes those rights unjustly.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Scottish National party spokesperson.