Council of Europe (UK Chairmanship)

Debate between Bob Stewart and Robert Walter

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walter]

Of course, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is the point that we are making. We could have a wider debate about why people commit crimes and why they go to prison, but my specific point is about the denial of liberty and what convention rights that denial of liberty impinges on. It is accepted that some rights in the convention can legitimately be denied. I am interested that Mr Hirst, when he went to Strasbourg, did not say that he was being denied the right to a family life by being in prison and ask why he could not have his wife and children there. He picked on one emotive issue—his voting and democratic rights—but I think that it is absolutely right that this Parliament decide the voting rights of prisoners, and if it decides that prisoners should not have a vote, so be it. That is part of our national sovereignty. It is a matter for national legislatures, not the Court.

My fourth point concerns the backlog. As I mentioned, the figure that I have is 162,000 cases, growing by 2,000 a month. I commend the commission on a Bill of Rights and its advice on this matter: it expressed concern that, whatever reforms we came up with for the Court, they would not deal with the cases currently in the system, and it recommended that we find a way to clear the backlog. One of the commission’s proposals, which is worth taking forward, is that across Europe are retired judges experienced in human rights law who might be brought out of retirement on, say, a one-year contract, subject to their being vetted, interviewed and so on, and that they be given responsibility solely for going through the list of 162,000 cases, deciding which are admissible and, if necessary, immediately sending them to the Court for judgment.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Did the commission not also recommend that the judges be able to dismiss cases, in order to reduce their number, saying, “We cannot deal with this anymore”? The figure of 162,000 is ginormous. We would never get through them.

[Mr Walter]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, we cannot get through them. We know that about 97% of those cases are inadmissible and could be got rid of straightaway, but we need somebody to sit down, go through the paperwork and say that they are inadmissible. If that were done, we might be able immediately to bring before the Court the few thousand cases that lie in the balance, or use this coterie of retired judges to sit in judgment if there are points of law involved that the Court has already been determined in previous cases and so no new judgments to be made.

It is not all as simple as that, though, because there are other constitutional issues. Many of the cases in Strasbourg get there because, as I understand it, there is no supreme court in the Russian Federation to adjudicate on them. They come straight to Strasbourg from the provincial courts, so we might have to persuade the Russian Federation to have a look at its court procedures—after it has got through its elections, of course.

I welcome the United Kingdom chairmanship. I know from colleagues in the Chamber that we are willing and ready to help the Minister and the Government to take forward our agenda, particularly on reform of the Court. The Interlaken process set in train some years ago was followed by a high-level conference under the Turkish presidency in Izmir, in which my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor participated on behalf of this country. I hope that we come up with concrete proposals in our six months to ensure that reform of the Court is not only an agenda item, but a reality.

I wish my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe well. I commend him and his deputy in Strasbourg, our excellent ambassador, Mrs Eleanor Fuller, who has done tremendous work. Thorbjørn Jagland, the former Norwegian Prime Minister, is an excellent secretary-general—one of the best the Council of Europe has had for a number of years—and is also very much in tune with the United Kingdom agenda.