Council of Europe (UK Chairmanship)

Brian Binley Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walter]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, because it sums up the fact that what I have described will bring into question the legitimacy of the decisions of the Committee of Ministers when it comes to enforcing judgments that have been handed down by the Court.

I want to move on to one aspect of the United Kingdom’s agenda for our chairmanship, with which the Minister also dealt at length. It is the reform of the European Court of Human Rights, which not only we in this country but many member states across Europe welcome.

There seems to be some dispute about what the backlog of cases in the Court is at the moment. The last figure that I heard, which was at the beginning of this month from the secretary-general of the Council of Europe, was 162,000 cases, and growing at the rate of 2,000 a month. I therefore welcome the approach that we are taking as the new chair of the Committee of Ministers.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend concerned that most of us sitting in the Chamber today might not be here when the end of that list is reached? Does that bother him?

[Mr Walter]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, which brings me neatly to the next one that I wanted to make.

I welcome the work of the commission on a Bill of Rights under the chairmanship of Sir Leigh Lewis. It was set up to advise on a British Bill of Rights, but at the request of the Prime Minister the first document that it published was advice to the Government on the reform of the European Court of Human Rights. It has expressed a view on that question, and I shall come to that in a moment. I also welcome the interest taken by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I know has been to Strasbourg and met the Court and is considering that very important issue.

I wish to deal with four issues related to the reform of the Court. The first, to which a number of Members have alluded, is the quality of the judges. Under the existing procedure, each member state puts forward three nominees when there is a vacancy for a judge of that nationality. Under the new procedures, those candidates are to be interviewed by the Committee of Ministers and by a sub-committee of the Parliamentary Assembly set up specifically for the purpose of making recommendations on which of the three judges is probably the best candidate. It then comes down to the Parliamentary Assembly to vote on those judges.

There has been phenomenal criticism in the Parliamentary Assembly that the judges nominated are not up to the quality that one expects in such an important court, which deals with human rights across the continent. Some of the judges are academics, and some are only what I would call administrative lawyers, but I believe that judges should have experience of sitting as court judges, preferably in the supreme court of their member state. They should not be people who have applied because they have been teaching a nice academic course specialising in human rights at a university for the past few years and thought, “Why not go to Strasbourg for a few years?” That is not the right way to select candidates.

The Parliamentary Assembly is considering another matter of some concern. If one of those judges drops out and is unable to perform his or her duties, the member state in question can nominate ad hoc judges to sit in their place in the Court. In the past four years, 77 ad hoc judges appointed to sit in for judges who were unable to be in Strasbourg were involved in 516 judgments. I am not sure, and there is some doubt, whether those ad hoc judges are of the same quality, because they do not go through the same selection procedure. They are not nominated, they are not interviewed either by the committee of Ministers or by the sub-committee of the Parliamentary Assembly, and they are certainly not voted for by the Parliamentary Assembly. I am not sure that the spirit of the convention is being implemented if we allow those 77 ad hoc judges to sit in judgment.

The second and most important point raised by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe was on subsidiarity and the filtering of cases, causing the backlog. Is the ECHR the final court of appeal for the 800 million people who live on the continent of Europe? I contend that it is not. I believe that it exists to act in partnership with our national supreme courts and that it should not be used as the final court of appeal. A number of members of the delegation met the secretary-general of the Council of Europe on Tuesday to discuss that. He said that—this is even worse—the majority of the cases before the Court involve people using it not as their final court of appeal, but their court of first instance. In the majority of cases, people are disgruntled by something that has happened in their locality—a remote part of Russia or wherever—and they do not use the Russian legal system first and foremost, but go straight to Strasbourg. We must stop that from happening.

People who appeal to the Supreme Court in this country, or even to the Court of Appeal on their way up to the Supreme Court, must seek leave to do so. We must create a situation like that. Requiring people to seek leave to appeal would mean that a judge in this country or another member state would determine whether such a case is admissible, or whether it should be heard by a national supreme court and whether that should be the end of the road.

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[Mr Walter]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that point. We must strike the right balance—strike out spurious claims but not genuine ones. In some cases, those making genuine claims could be refused leave to appeal for, if I may say, political reasons, when their case should go to the Strasbourg Court. In this country, I have every confidence that the Supreme Court or any other lower court would act in the interests of the law and equity, but I might question the courts in a number of other member states—I will not name them in the Chamber.

My third point concerns the competence of the Court and its relationship with national Parliaments and sovereign member states. That the House debated and voted overwhelmingly against prisoner voting rights showed that we in this country feel that somebody committed to jail for an indictable offence should have their voting rights taken away while in prison. That is at variance with the judgment of the Court. I am not a lawyer, but in my view it is absolutely right that a court can sentence somebody to prison and so deny their liberty in several areas. In sentencing them to prison, we are not infringing most of their convention rights—for example, we are not infringing their right to life or imposing on them inhuman and degrading treatment. Instead, we are deciding to deny them certain liberties—for example, by not allowing them to go home to their family every night, we are denying them the right to a family life.

[Mr Binley]

Do the people sent to prison not have the choice about whether they go to prison, and should that not be a major consideration? Furthermore, is this not a constitutional right, rather than a human right? I know that that takes us on to aspects of law, but these are the things that make people very angry.

[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.

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[Sir Alan Meale (Mansfield) (Lab)]

I said that I was not going to be able to speak in the debate, but I managed to get somebody else to chair a meeting in this building in time to come back to the Chamber.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) on her persistence and endeavour in securing this debate, although I suspect our agreement on and understanding of each other’s politics ceases there. She has not grasped at all what the Council of Europe is about, which is human rights, the rule of law and democracy. They are all intertwined; they are not simple little solutions set aside from each other and never the twain shall meet. They are interlinked so that we can get policies that cross national boundaries.

The hon. Lady cites one or two examples that everybody in this Chamber, including the Minister and Labour Members, agree on, but they are minor cases where things have to be cleared up. That is all part of the agenda for change, which the Council of Ministers and the Council of Europe are undertaking. Let us deal with the big issues, one of which is capital punishment. Countries are not allowed to become members of the Council of Europe if they carry out capital punishment. We must remember that there are 800 million people in these 47 countries in greater Europe, and we cannot singly deal with one or two issues such as the ones she raised.

[Mr Binley]

Does the hon. Gentleman not appreciate that many of the decisions by the European Court of Human Rights that gain the headlines in our newspapers actually diminish the role of justice and therefore are very important?

[Sir Alan Meale]

The hon. Gentleman is right. I apologise if I have led him up the path of thinking that these minor matters in relation to the very big issues that the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights deal with are in some way not important. They are all very important, and they are very important to the people involved. As the Minister rightly pointed out, Members on both sides of the House are seriously of a mind for change and reform as far as the Court is concerned, because of the huge catalogue of outstanding cases, many of which could and should be dealt with in the courts of the individual countries. We should accept responsibility for our failure to act to make the courts deal with them. As the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) said, the problem of the courts and the outstanding cases in the European Court is caused by failures in individual nations and their court systems.

I said in an intervention that we have a very democratic system, which could be reformed in some way, for choosing judges. The three candidates that are submitted by all member countries have to be fully experienced in such matters before their names are even put forward and there has to be a gender balance. Those people are then examined by a committee in full before recommendations are made to the Assembly, which then decides. I have been there on a number of occasions over the years, as have other hon. Members who are present today, when time and again we have sent back the names of candidates and said, “They are not qualified,” “They do not come up to the standard,” or, in a number of cases, “No gender choice whatever has been given.” A few years ago, some countries refused to submit the name of a female candidate. The system is well-tested and I do not think that talking about “sleepwalking” away from accountability is the best way forward.

The Minister gave us the best way forward, which has been accepted by all parties. We need reform. We have to wake up the courts and the Governments of member countries and say, “You have to take responsibility for and deal with these issues; the European Court is for bigger things.” The example I gave of where such instances might apply involved a failure by two members of the Council of Europe area and, indeed, Britain—so three countries in all—in respect of seized assets in the northern area of Cyprus. An individual citizen went through all the courses for legal redress in their own country, Cyprus, and then went to the guarantor powers of Greece and the United Kingdom, but the case failed and there was no other domestic court for that case to go to. Members might ask, “What does a person’s ownership of their home have to do with the European Court of Human Rights?” Well, it has a lot to do with it if someone’s country has been invaded, they have been marshalled out of their home and local area into another country, and the return of the assets in the house, and the house itself, has been refused.

The Loizidou case went to the Court, which took a number of years to deal with it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) rightly pointed out, it was then sent back to Turkey and the regime in the northern area of Cyprus, which were told, “You must deal with this matter. What you have done is illegal—you have illegally invaded, you have illegally occupied and you have illegally kept rightful owners away from their homes.” The judgment that came down in the end was that reparation to the tune of nearly £1 million in costs and compensation should be paid to the family not for the home they had lost but for the loss of use of their home over that 30-odd year period. That case could not have been dealt with in any other court.

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[Michael Connarty]

That is a very important question. If the Government should bring back a proposal on, for example, whether prisoners in custody should have voting rights, and we decided that we did not wish to accept it, we could reject it. They would have to come back again to try to put another proposal, and I presume negotiations would go on between the Committee of Ministers, particularly with our chairmanship in the next six months, to find something that would be suitable, and that would be correct. However, I believe—this is my own judgment—that if we got to the point where we said, “No, we refuse to implement this”, then there must be some question about whether we want to remain in the Council of Europe at all.

[Mr Binley]

The hon. Gentleman is a very dedicated member of the Parliamentary Assembly, and it is a pleasure to work with him. Does he recognise that at the end of the day the judgment goes to the Committee of Ministers, and that equally at the end of the day it has no powers of enforcement? I relate that to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale): nothing can be done, and therein lies one of the problems.

[Michael Connarty]

I think that is correct in what I have seen of the Council of Europe. It can make judgments, it can put down statements, people can support those statements, and they can be transmitted through the Committee of Ministers to the representatives of all the countries who send a representative to that Committee. One of the reasons I am quite a strong supporter of the European Union is that it can bring in directives, and has done so, as I shall mention later, in areas which are close to my heart and to the logic of why I am here as a representative of the people of my constituency. It has an enforceable power, mainly tied up with the economic power that lies in the EU rather than just the Court of Justice. But yes, I think that there is a need for a much more diligent pursuit of the matters raised by the hon. Member for North Thanet.

The third part of what I say will be on the way in which the Council of Europe operates. The debate on the scope and effect of proposals, papers or conventions has to be had vigorously in the committees. That was done by the hon. Member for North Thanet, and I will give examples of where, even in the year that I have been there, I have taken that route and had changes made. Hopefully I will bring about other changes, because that is what we are there to do: we are not there just to go to the plenaries and get our card ticked for being present; we are, I hope, there to go to the committees, participate in the debates and form and reform the papers, the proposals and the conventions that eventually come out of the Council of Europe. If we do that, it is our duty to come here and argue for them to be implemented in our country in the fullest way declared in those conventions. If we cannot do that, I question whether we are fully participating in the process.

I thank the hon. Member for Mansfield (Sir Alan Meale), because he organises the Labour side of the delegation. He was the person who suggested that, having been Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee and been a member for the past 13 years, I might see going to the Council of Europe as a natural progression, because I could see more of the debates at the fundamental level, which I did not see in the minutiae of the implementation of European directives. I thank him for inviting me to attend.

It was suggested that I should go into the committee on culture, science and education. I will speak a little about the processes that I found there, because it is important to put on the record, for those who do not know what this is all about and who read the debates, what happens there. When I went along, one of the large papers that was debated was on “the religious dimension of intercultural dialogue.” When I read it, I realised, as a humanist, that the Council of Europe’s fundamental principle of the right to belief as well as faith, was missing from the paper. When the committee invited people from all the main religions to discuss the paper, it also invited the secretary of the European Federation of Humanists to present a paper and to be heard in Paris. We then tabled amendments, which were debated and added to the paper. The paper was eventually discussed again in the committee, of which the hon. Member for North Thanet is also a member, and went to the full plenary, where it was passed by a 95% vote of the Parliamentary Assembly.

There are some things in that paper that I believe are priorities for our sixth-month presidency and that will be very helpful in a world where we know there is still anti-Semitism, sectarianism and in many countries an anti-Christian movement that threatens people’s rights, but also persecution and a denial of the rights of people who are not affiliated to religious organisations. I found those issues fundamental to why I am here, what I believe in and what I believe are the rights of the people whom I represent, and there they were being discussed in that committee. Hopefully, my participation in that debate changed the document.

There was opposition from one or two fundamentalist born again Christians who tried to take all the references to humanism out of the paper. I am glad to say that it was defended by people of all faiths in the committee and in the Assembly, because it is not about being against something, but about including people and diversity in the real sense, not just in a small way. That was an important lesson for me that when I was placed on a committee, if I took it seriously, I could do something; I would not necessarily have carried the day, but I could at least express those views.

The other committee that I sit on is the social, health and family affairs committee. The discussions of that committee chimed very much with the interests that I have always thought that we are there to pursue, such as the discussions about human trafficking. Some hon. Members may know that I am now vice-chair of the all-party human trafficking group in this House. I have pressed—even harried—the Government to sign up to the European directives on human trafficking and the new, extended European directive against the sexual exploitation and abuse of children. I found that there was very much a campaign running on that in the Council of Europe—the “One in Five” campaign. Again, I am grateful to the leader of the delegation, who nominated me to be the UK representative on that organisation. It is in fact a network of contact parliamentarians to stop sexual violence against children.

When we talk about these things, particularly at a European level about cross-border action, some people think it is not to do with them, but I have to say that in my own constituency, in the town of Grangemouth, an industrial town, there have been two unbelievably horrendous cases—many cases, but two horrendous cases of sexual abuse of female children aged 13 and 14 months by two different people, put on the internet and spread around the massive paedophile rings throughout the world. It is in every street and every town. In fact the deputy commissioner for children in England is going to have a two-year investigation running into sexual abuse of children. On one day, she took a snapshot throughout England of local authorities and care organisations; in one day, on the same day in England, 1,000 cases of sexual abuse of children were reported in England—in one day at that snapshot. That is how frightening this is.

When we had our first meeting we were addressed by Mr John Carr, who is from the UK and is the expert adviser to the International Telecommunications Union on online protection of children. The figures he gave were horrendous: there are 1 million images on paedophile internet sites at any time in the world; there are 15 million transactions a year in the country. The one thing that is a problem is that a site can be shut down or blocked in this country within 24 hours, but there are sites running in Russia and in the USA that were reported and identified over a year ago but are still running, in Russia because of gangsterism and it is hidden and hard to get at, and in the USA because it is protected by state laws and local laws. The providers of these things can still keep running a year after they are found to be trading. It is a massive, criminal, monetary-driven enterprise—paedophile activity and the abuse of children. That was a salutary lesson for me that there was something going on there that wanted to join all 47 countries—and wider than that, but all 47 countries as a start—in a campaign against one of the most heinous crimes and most heinous possible abuses of human rights and the rights of the child.

As an adjunct, we debated in the social, health and family affairs committee—I was asked to speak, and I think the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald) spoke in the same debate—the rights of undocumented migrant children. I think the most succinct statement of what the Council of Europe is about is the amendment from that committee that was spoken to by Madam Strik from the Netherlands. It said that a child is first and always a child, and then after may be a migrant. If that is what the Council of Europe is about, that is so powerful for the people we represent, because they want that to be a right for everyone in all their towns and all their communities, and the Council of Europe allows us to do that.

We have also been addressed by the UN special rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, Najat Maalla M’jid, a woman who does this work throughout the world. It was in fact connecting the Council of Europe countries to what is happening in a much wider portfolio.

In this process of holding the presidency or the chairmanship of the Council of Ministers, I have an extra priority. It is embarrassing, and it relates to the question that I asked the hon. Member for North Thanet about having ratified a convention. The United Kingdom signed up to the convention on the protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, which was laid on 25 October 2007—almost exactly four years ago—on 5 May 2008. We have yet to ratify it, and if we do not ratify it, it is not brought into force. Let us look at the countries that have. Spain, which was referred to earlier, signed it in 2009 and ratified it in December 2010, and has put it into force. It is no use signing something that is not put into force. I have been trying to get in to ask the Prime Minister for a number of weeks now—but have not been called—when we are going to ratify it. In our chairmanship six months, that is the time we should do this. We should ratify that convention.

It is amazing how many people have actually been involved, and I pay compliment to a lady who I am told is called Martine McCutcheon, who starred in “Love Actually”—I think she played the Prime Minister’s girlfriend, if I recall correctly. She presented, with people from the UK, a petition, gathered with the help of the Body Shop, of 735,889 signatures, exactly at the time it was presented, calling for the UK to ratify that convention. That was 12 May 2011. The message does not seem to have got through to our Prime Minister and Government yet, but the people of this country want us to do that.

I pay a compliment to them and to the hon. Member, who is a Member of the Government party, who is the chair of the UK Parliament’s all-party human trafficking group, and to Anthony Steen, a former Member of this House who set up an institute, the Human Trafficking Foundation. He is being supported to get campaigning organisations in all of the EU countries, but we still have a long way to go, and I hope it will be led by our chairmanship.

I have one other small point, but it is an important point. The committee on culture, science and education had a proposal before it for a recommendation towards a European framework convention on youth rights. Disappointingly, the response of the permanent member representing the UK, who will become the chair of the Committee of Ministers, was that they did not really think we needed youth rights. Unfortunately, it is a fact that now, in most of the countries of Europe, there is a long period between being a child and being put out to work. Sometimes people study; sometimes they try to make a life for themselves; and sometimes they go into work. In that period, a lot of young people fall between the two stools. They are not treated as children and they are not adults. They are not people who are making the rules; they are the people who are having to suffer the badly made rules.

Why I want to raise this is that it gives us an example of what we can do in the Council of Europe. I was on that committee and was involved in the draft. I took the draft away with me and I took it to people in the West Lothian youth forum, which is a forum set up by the local authority. I gave them copies and asked them to go away and use the youth forum to discuss this matter. What did they think of it? What did they think should be done with it? What ideas were missing from it? The forum came back with three very simple amendments. One was on housing rights and the right to housing. The forum members pointed out that you can get housing—you can get housing in the worst dumps and slums of the cities—if you are a young person, because you are basically an insecure tenant and you have difficulties. They wanted rights to housing that is actually of a standard that is acceptable at a European level.

The second one was on employment. They wanted in employment the right to training with in-work accreditation, because they knew so many young people who had got jobs and were used, basically. They were told they were getting an apprenticeship, spent two years as a grease monkey, and then when they asked to go to college to get certification, they were sacked and some other young person got taken on to go through the same process again and again.

Those are two very important matters. The third one I think is very important as well, particularly since we allow the UK Youth Parliament to meet here in this House, in this Chamber. People in the forum said they want these matters, if we ever have a convention, to be monitored by the Youth Parliament or their equivalent in Europe, so that they can have a say on whether the Governments who sign up to these things are doing anything about it.

[Mr Binley]

I am again most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is being very generous with his time. Does he think there ought to be a balancing factor to rights? I am not denying the importance of rights, but I wonder whether we ought to give equal importance to the responsibilities of the individual. Perhaps he has an opportunity to make that point and to ask the Minister whether he might consider it as well.

[Michael Connarty]

I think that we have quite a developed idea among those who take it seriously that with rights come responsibilities. I explain to everyone who comes around Parliament that it is a nice building, fine, but buildings are buildings; Parliament is about what goes on in here—the concept of democracy, the demos, the people who had the right in Athens and the responsibility to run the country. They had the power but also the responsibility. That, basically, is how society should be run. We get rights, but we have responsibilities at the same time. I think that our Government in the past tried to echo that again and again. I think that there are questions about whether people think that they have only rights. In Scotland at the moment, everyone thinks that everything is free: they do not pay council tax increases, they do not pay for their education, they do not pay for their prescriptions—it is all free. I am afraid that that is not a world in which people can live for very long, because they soon become bankrupted financially but also bankrupted in terms of principle. I think that the hon. Gentleman is right: there needs to be a balance.

Those young people were amazing. They took it seriously. A Member of Parliament said, “Here is a convention or a document that will affect your lives if it is ever passed. What do you think?” They went off and treated it seriously. I know that one of the people who helped to draft it, a young David Begg, sits in the Scottish Youth Parliament, and some of them come down here and participate in the UK Youth Parliament. That is giving them rights and responsibilities in the right way, and I hope that we will take that seriously and perhaps change our position and encourage the development of something that will speak to the youth and that has to contain responsibilities. However, the debate in the culture, science and education committee was the opposite: people said, “We don’t want to talk about responsibilities because we want to talk about young people having rights without saying they have to pay for them.” I do not necessarily agree with the balance, but that was how it was drafted.

I will finish with one last reference to a document, Madam Deputy Speaker, because a lot of the debate going on is as though the Council of Europe is out there, the Court of Human Rights is out there, and they come and fly in and drop things on top of us that we have to implement. There is a paper from 6 June Parliamentary Assembly that I hope that every Member of the House will read. Perhaps members of the public would like to read it. It is called “National parliaments: guarantors of human rights in Europe”. It states:

“The report examines ways to better exploit parliaments’ potential in this respect and proposes basic principles to be respected by the parliaments of the Council of Europe member states.”

It then lists a lot of very, very sensible suggestions for how Parliaments might do this. I think that is what it is about. It is not about saying, “Europe will make the decision for you. The Council of Europe will make the decision for you. You just have to implement it.” It is about thinking about how we, as parliamentarians in our Parliaments, can take those guarantees correctly.

In my first year as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I realised that it was the one place where I could find the things that brought me into Parliament, the things that brought me into public life as a community activist, from where I went on to be a councillor and to give up so much of my life and time to this process of democratic representation. It is about human rights. The Council of Europe sets a benchmark against which it says to all the countries in the Council of Europe area, “You will be judged by the Council of Europe.” Enforceability is very important, and I would like to see more of it, but it says, “You will be judged by it. You will be held up to scrutiny by it. The more important thing is that you will have to ask yourselves, in your Parliament, how do you measure up to these human rights that should be available to everyone?” When I hear debates in here with people throwing out phrases that clearly say, “I want this human right, but that person from that country should not have it because we do not want them to have it. Send them back to their country, but they might be tortured. Send them back to their country, but they might face capital punishment,” I am ashamed, because that should not be talked about in this mother of Parliaments. Human rights are fundamental and the Council of Europe is their guardian. I am very pleased to be there, and I am sure that our time as the chair, with the leadership of the Minister and the Labour Benches, will be a good six months.

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[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who is leaving his place, for reminding me that I need a haircut this weekend.

I am a member of the Council of Europe—and a proud member, actually. I am rather surprised by how much I am enjoying it, but you will understand the reasons, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I welcome many of the Minister’s remarks. I was especially pleased to hear his comments about a Bill of Rights and about subsidiarity. The Government seem to have a real programme to implement over the six months of our chairmanship, and most of us in this House would welcome that. However, we shall be scrutinising his work and keeping an eye on him. That is the job of this place, and I know that he will welcome it.

[Mr Leigh]

No, he won’t.

[Mr Binley]

I am sure he will.

The European Court of Human Rights has a proud history of defending the rights of individuals, but there is no doubt that there have been several questionable judgments that raise issues about its competence across the piece. I refer to the membership of the judges’ bench. It has already been said that a number of judges have little judicial experience, and indeed that some of them were political appointees. That does no good for the whole concept of jurisprudence. We ought to be making an effort to ensure that a court of this importance is matched by the quality of the judges who sit on its benches, and the sooner we get down to that, the better it will be. One judge was reported not to understand the concept of legal precedents. When one gets that sort of ignorance in a court of this kind, one begins to wonder what sort of justice it imparts. Indeed, many people in this country have begun to believe that some of its judgments are, to say the least, beyond the pale. Those people are responsible for overturning the decisions of this House and our courts, so we have a right to expect a greater degree of competence and better qualifications. I know that the Minister will take those thoughts on board.

My next point is about languages—a subject touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald). The 2005 Woolf report made 26 recommendations on the working methods of the European Court of Human Rights. One was the provision of language training, and yet that has not been implemented. We all know that interpreters can change the nuance of language dramatically when they interpret one language into another. Because the nuance changes, the meaning can be totally different. That is simply unfair to the people who put their trust and faith in the European Court of Human Rights. I urge the Minister to put language training for judges on his little list as an absolute priority.

The 2010 Interlaken conference and declaration stressed the need to preserve the high quality of the European Court of Human Rights. I have already referred to the lack of quality. This matter is consistently asked about, and it is consistently recorded that we need to do things. No wonder the people of this country get a little impatient when nothing happens. I want to send the European Court of Human Rights the message that it must get its act together, because it is undermining the confidence of the people of this country—and, no doubt, that of the people in other countries—which is so necessary for it in doing its work.

I was going to talk about prisoner voting, but we had a big debate on that recently. Suffice it to say that I believe that prisoners are in prison by choice. They are not forced to break the law; they choose to break the law. Therefore, there is no problem with the removal of that human right. They choose to deny themselves that human right. We ought to do some plain talking when this matter comes before the Committee of Ministers.

I also question the judges’ appreciation of our values and legal procedures. This nation is lucky to have a common law based on almost 1,000 years of life experience—a common law that has served this nation well. To my mind, it covered all the necessary protections of the people of this country. Indeed, they seem to think that it covered the necessary protections themselves. The fact that there are so many different codes of law in a 47 nation-strong Europe underlines the need for greater knowledge of the various codes of law in those countries. If necessary, that might require a division of the judges’ bench. We certainly need them to understand our code of law if they are making judgments about our citizens.

[Martin Horwood]

In arguing for an awareness of our code of law, cultural traditions and values, is the hon. Gentleman therefore arguing in support of British judges having the right to interpret the Human Rights Act 1998, and therefore the European convention on human rights, in British courts?

[Mr Binley]

I am delighted to say that most senior judges believe in the primacy of Parliament, and I have no concerns about that. A few judges have tried to argue differently. Only recently, I noticed the remarks of a senior judge in the Court of Appeal that underlined the importance of the primacy of this place.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way again?

[Mr Binley]

I want other people to be able to speak, and many Members have spoken for a long time, so I will reject the hon. Gentleman’s request on this occasion.

I wish to touch briefly on the 162,000-case backlog in the European Court of Human Rights. We all know that it is farcical, and that something must be done about it. I am glad that the Minister has decided to do something. However, I must ask him something. I was once told by a fortune teller that I would live to beyond 80, which would be another 11 years. Will the measures that he puts in place during our chairmanship be completed, and will the list be eradicated, in that time? It worries me, and I want to go to meet my maker with a clear and untroubled mind.

Finally, I wish to say that I know the Minister cares about these matters and is well placed to represent us in respect of them. I look forward—for the first time in many years—to action on the European Court of Human Rights that will give the British people confidence. If the Minister comes away after the six months of the British chairmanship having achieved that objective, we will all be prepared to say, “Very well done, Minister!”

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called, and a privilege to have the chance to play a small part in this debate. The UK chairmanship of the Council of Europe comes round not very often, so we can truly say that we will not see the like of this parliamentary occasion for decades to come.

I concur with many colleagues who have spoken, particularly on the urgent need for reform of the European Court of Human Rights and the terrible problems caused by the large backlog of cases. I am sure that all hon. Members know of constituents who simply do not know whether a case that they have submitted will ever be heard, and who do not know where they stand.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale) and others commented on the importance of internet governance in Europe. That is important in terms not only of internet freedoms, which were an important part of the Arab spring, but of personal security and trade. We need the internet to work as an open common trading environment. People who seek to pass off goods or to break copyright and intellectual property protections on goods and services in the EU, and who use the internet to facilitate that, should know that the force of law will come down on them. That is a challenge for the Council of Europe, the Government and the EU.

I should like to use the time allowed not to go over some of the matters that have already been covered, but to ask the Minister to consider ethics and integrity in sport—another important matter—as part of the work of the UK chairmanship of the Council of Europe. The debate is timely, given the Council’s work on match fixing, on which it has engaged with UEFA. It is also part of the general debate on the reform of FIFA, the governing body of world football, about which members of the Council have also had things to say.

Sport and the ethics of sport have played an important role in the Council of Europe since it was started in 1949. Through the years, the Council has built up significant competence in specialised areas such as quality assurance in sport, and agreements adopted at world and European political levels. The Council of Europe has a unique and important role to play within the sporting environment. It is not a member state Government, an EU institution or an international Government or body, but a forum that brings together people who have concerns about the future of Europe, how countries work together, and the rights and freedoms that we all enjoy. It works across the political spectrum, including in the world of culture and sport.

The Council passed the enlarged partial agreement on sport, which provides a forum for a discussion of ethics in sport and for championing those issues. In 2005 the Committee of Ministers adopted a recommendation that called on the Council to consider that

“good governance in sport is a complex network of policy measures and private regulations used to promote integrity in the management of the core values of sport such as democratic, ethical, efficient and accountable sports activities; and that these measures apply equally to the public administration sector of sport and to the non-governmental sports sector”.

The Committee also called on the Council to consider setting up

“mechanisms to monitor the implementation of good governance in sport principles, and put in place mechanisms to deal with inappropriate or unethical behaviours in sport, including prosecution where necessary.”

Those are fundamental points, and I am pleased that the Council considered them in its working activities. It could bring those recommendations to bear and raise the issue of good governance with FIFA, the world football body. An active debate on that has been led by Members of this Parliament—the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport this year produced a report on FIFA reform and allegations of corruption against senior officials within the game.

FIFA is based in Europe, and as we have heard, almost every country is represented in the Council of Europe. One country that is not represented is the Vatican, which FIFA is like in some ways. It has an extremely powerful global figure—Sepp Blatter—who is beyond the protection of government. He certainly moves around the world like a latter-day pontiff or monarch, and is above the counsel of both court and Parliament.

People who love the game of football, which is played around the world, including within the jurisdiction of this Parliament, ask, “Is that right? Is there a role for international bodies such as the Council of Europe and parliamentary bodies and Parliaments to speak up?” Allegations of corruption against senior members of FIFA and members of the FIFA executive committee have been made in this Parliament. It is right that we take those allegations up with such governing bodies, and that we challenge the president of FIFA, Sepp Blatter. It is also right to ask whether FIFA is putting its house in order, and whether the concerns of the citizens of Europe, including citizens of this country, are being dealt with by governing bodies. Should we not seek to prosecute people who have done wrong, and launch independent investigations into allegations of wrongdoing?

FIFA is a particularly good—or rather, bad—example of a body challenged by allegations of corruption against its most senior people. In the past 12 months, of the leading 24 FIFA members who make up the executive committee, 11 have faced serious allegations of corruption, two have been suspended, one has been banned for life, one has resigned and four are currently under investigation. This is a body in considerable crisis. In June Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, committed the organisation to leading a process of internal reform. I believe that that process needs to move a lot more quickly. I believe that no real progress has been made. At the FIFA congress earlier this month, Sepp Blatter set out a taskforce.

[Mr Binley]

My hon. Friend knows that I am very interested in football, and in fact played for a long time. Does he not think that Sepp Blatter is part of the problem, not part of the answer, and that the review of FIFA ought to be independent and made up of a global group of people who really understand football?

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. For a review of FIFA to have any meaning, there needs to be a fully independent investigation into all the allegations made. Transparency International, which conducted a report for FIFA, said that this should be the first step towards cleaning up FIFA. It should involve people from outside the organisation and from different walks of life—perhaps judges, people in politics and people with experience of governance in other sporting institutions—who could take the lead and have the power to initiate their own investigations, produce their own reports and do so in public. FIFA has set up a taskforce to look at good governance within FIFA. I think that that needs to move faster and that it should consider commissioning people from outside the organisation to lead the investigations internally. That is absolutely key.

We know of the concerns expressed by some of the judges who have served on FIFA’s ethics committee. In January one of Germany’s most respected judges, Günter Hirsch, left the committee in disgust and said:

“The events of the past few weeks have raised and strengthened the impression that responsible persons in Fifa have no real interest in playing an active role in resolving, punishing and avoiding violations against ethic regulations of Fifa.”

These are legitimate areas of public concern, and it is legitimate for Parliament to take an interest in them too. FIFA has taken some steps forward in the past few weeks. The idea that the location of the World cup should be decided not by an elite few people in the game, but by representatives of every FIFA member, is a step in the right direction. However, widespread investigations are needed into all the allegations of corruption made so far, so that there can be a clean slate.

There has to be greater transparency in the work of FIFA and in how its money is spent, particularly in developing football countries around the world, so that it can be audited and publicly accounted for, just as the work of Parliament or the Government is. The backgrounds of people who serve on international bodies such as FIFA should be clear. If they have any conflicts of interest those should be made clear, as is the case for a member of the Government or a Member of Parliament. If they have financial interests, or their family members have financial interests, in football, it should be on the public record. Any pounds spent by FIFA anywhere in the world should be accounted for. We should know where they go. That is what is required to put football’s governing body back on an even keel and to restore faith in it. However, because of how it is constituted, that change has to be driven by FIFA and Sepp Blatter.

The pace of that change and reform must be greatly accelerated, and it must have a degree of transparency that it simply does not have now. The Council of Europe, and the UK’s chairmanship of it, could consider that matter as part of the work of the Council’s sub-committee on youth and sport. We should debate those issues within that forum, alongside its work on other areas of ethics in sport, particularly match fixing, as I mentioned earlier. It should produce its own report and view to add to the external pressure that must be placed on FIFA, if the necessary reforms are to be put in place and we are to have confidence in FIFA as a world governing body. That would be an incredibly important and popular thing for the Council of Europe to do, and a great way for the UK’s chairmanship to demonstrate its commitment to ethics and sport, as well as the other important areas of work that the Minister outlined.