European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Liam Byrne

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I want to speak to new clause 193, which is in my name and the names of my hon. and right hon. Friends. I tabled it in the hope that the Minister would take it on board. I want to give the Government a chance this afternoon to set out their pro-European credentials.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton) so eloquently put it, the Prime Minister has said that, yes, we may be leaving the European Union, but that we intend to be good European neighbours. New clause 193 is an opportunity for the Government to set out how we, in this country, will remain determined to stay a member of one of the most important European clubs, the European club that we helped to found—the Council of Europe, the European convention on human rights and the European Court of Human Rights.

We moved the new clause because one of the most significant consequences of this divorce from Europe is that we will leave the European Court of Justice. Indeed, an important part of the leave campaign’s argument was that we must escape from the tutelage of these terrible European judges and that only British judges are good enough for us—unless, of course, they happen to want to give this Parliament a chance to debate this Bill, in which case they instantly become enemies of the people.

This idea that foreign judges are anathema to this place is, of course, complete fiction. This very afternoon, the Government have solicited our support for CETA—the comprehensive economic trade agreement—replete with the new investor state dispute mechanism, a new court populated not with British judges but with foreign judges. The idea that foreign judges are about to be removed or extracted from the body politic in this country is nonsense, and that is why I think we must argue that one of the most important tribunals that oversees the law in this country should remain in place. That court is the European Court of Human Rights.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a fundamental point about our sympathy not only with our European partners but with our common European heritage, stemming straight out of Judeo-Christian theology through the Enlightenment and various schools at Paris and the Sorbonne, into the concept of rights that has emerged. Those rights were not simply created by the Council of Europe, as he seems to be claiming, but rather by British judges over several hundred years—admittedly taken from French and other traditions—and were re-imposed on Europe in the aftermath of the second world war. Although that heritage is important, as he rightly claims, would it not also be appropriate to recognise that some of those judges today are Moldovan and Russian and have been rather more prone to look for dictatorial abuse than to guarantee rights?

[Liam Byrne]

There is a reason why Russia has had its credentials suspended by the Council of Europe, and that is that it is not prepared to honour the great European Magna Carta that British civil servants helped to draw up under Churchill’s inspiration in the years after the second world war.

The Conservative manifesto—