Council of Europe (UK Chairmanship)

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

This has been quite a consensual debate. It has not been as noisy and pacey as the debate about Europe that we had on Monday, but there has been a great deal of quality and quite a lot of unity, not only on the importance of the Council of Europe, but on the need to reform some of its institutions, such as the European Court. I welcome the Minister’s remarks and those of the Labour representative, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), although I think she might have made a slight slip of the tongue when she suggested that the landmass covered by the Council of Europe stretched from Vladivostok to Reykjavik. The term “landmass” might come as something of a surprise to the Icelanders.

I pay tribute to all the members of the British delegation. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) will be sorry that he is unable to contribute to today’s debate as he is feeling rather unwell. He is a committed member of the delegation, and I am sure that hon. Members will regret not hearing one of his robust contributions. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter). He burnished his European credentials earlier this week, but he has received so many accolades today as the leader of the British delegation that that fact is worth mentioning too.

It is an enormous honour for Britain to take on the chairmanship of the Council of Europe. As the Minister highlighted, Britain was involved right at the beginning in establishing the institution, which was forged from the embers of wartime Europe and has promoted human rights, freedom and democracy, the rule of law and cultural co-operation ever since. It is sad that we are now so complacent that in some circles the phrase “human rights” has become something of a dirty word. Indeed, on occasion even the rule of law and the right of judges to interpret human rights have been questioned.

The Council of Europe shows that this is an important area that needs to be defended. Obviously the Council of Europe has a much lighter touch than the European Union and its institutions, but that gives it a much wider and more comprehensive remit. It has not just touched on human rights: we also have conventions on cybercrime, pharmaceuticals, the prevention of terrorism and the prevention of torture, and—as the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) pointed out—on trafficking human beings and on racism and intolerance, including intolerance based on religious belief or non-belief.

The complacent and sometimes rather lazy criticism of human rights and institutions at the European level can easily drift into a reversal of the progress that we have seen in all these enormously important areas. The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale), who is no longer in his place, pointed out how important it is not just to accept that the conventions exist and that a piece of paper has been signed, but to ensure that cases are considered in detail and measures are enforced in member states. However, that does not mean that there is no need for reform. The Liberal Democrats welcome the Government’s initiative to look into reforming Council of Europe institutions. The European convention on human rights is something that we should stoutly defend. We were the first state to ratify it, and we should certainly welcome the European Union’s accession to it and the application of those disciplines to its institutions.

[Mr Leigh]

During the lifetime of this Government, will the Liberal part of the coalition veto any attempt to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998?

[Martin Horwood]

I do not think that there is any suggestion that we will repeal the Human Rights Act, which actually allows this country to exercise its sovereignty by bringing the European convention on human rights into British law and giving British judges the right to enforce it. That is a re-enforcement of British sovereignty, so I would be surprised if any such suggestion were made.

However, the European Court of Human Rights clearly has a lot of problems. Mention has been made of the 155,000-case backlog. Obviously it is right that the British chairmanship should work to ensure that the Court’s judgments are implemented across the rest of Europe as well as they are in the UK, that its membership is of sufficiently high quality and, most importantly, that it does not act as a substitute for domestic courts.

One good initiative by the coalition has been the establishment of the commission on a Bill of Rights, which has already made interim recommendations on reforming the Court. The commission said in July:

“It is essential for the Court to be able to address cases involving serious questions affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention, and serious issues of general importance, where the Court’s intervention is justified. The Court should be a court of last resort, and not a first port of call for all human rights issues. It should be adjudicating hundreds of cases a year, not thousands, and certainly not tens of thousands, and ensuring that the principle of subsidiarity is observed by national institutions with the primary responsibility for the protection of human rights”.

The British chairmanship should build on that report, and seize the opportunity to take forward reform of the Court. I also hope, however, that the UK chairmanship will not be entirely distracted by the mechanics of human rights, and that it will champion those rights where they need to be championed.

In that respect, the UK chairmanship can build on the excellent work of the Foreign Secretary in his extensive report on human rights and democracy produced last year. It contains a list of countries causing concern to the British Government because of their human rights record. That list includes several European countries and one member state of the Council of Europe. Outside the Council of Europe it highlights Belarus, which is currently barred from membership because of its human rights record. The Foreign Secretary’s report describes “successive waves of repression” in that country. The Deputy Prime Minister has referred to it as “Europe’s shameful secret”. The Liberal Democrats’ own youth organisation has highlighted the struggle of its Belarusian sister organisation, Civil Forum, stating that its members

“continue to protest against the regime despite the potential violence they often face. Their struggle for human rights and political freedom is an inspiration to the global Liberal Youth movement.”

Sadly, I am sure that similar things could well be happening in such organisations in other political traditions as well. If the UK chairmanship can advance the cause of human rights in Belarus, that would be extremely welcome.

Russia also gets an unfavourable mention in the Foreign Secretary’s list. The report talks about

“restrictions on freedom of assembly, harassment and obstruction of NGOs and journalists”.

It also states:

“Human rights defenders in Russia remained at high risk in 2010.”

It highlights the cases of Oleg Orlov, of the human rights organisation Memorial, and of Sapiyat Magomedova, a human rights lawyer. It also mentions the trials of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, and talks about the circumstances surrounding the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, about which many questions remain unanswered. This is all very sad, because Russia has for centuries been a pillar of European culture and civilisation, and it needs to understand that showing respect for freedom, democracy and the rule of law is absolutely essential if it is to become a full member of the European family of nations.

As well as mentioning Belarus and Russia, the report also refers to examples even closer to the heart of Europe. Hungary’s new constitution gives cause for concern, and Amnesty International has highlighted issues in it relating to the rights of women, as well as to

“the provision allowing for life imprisonment without the possibility of parole…and the exclusion of sexual orientation from the protected grounds of discrimination”.

Hungary was in many ways at the starting point of Europe’s democratic revolution in 1989. It is a free democracy, and a full member of the Council of Europe and of the European Union, and it would be a great shame if it were to acquire a poor reputation in the area of human rights. I hope that under the UK chairmanship of the Council of Europe we shall see proactive debate and promotion of human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

I welcome the Minister’s remarks on the forthcoming London conference on cyberspace. It is important for it to tackle the threats from cybercrime and even co-ordinated cyber-attack. I also hope, however, that, in line with our role in the Council of Europe, it will emphasise the values of freedom on the internet and in cyberspace. Throughout the whole episode of the Arab spring so far, we have seen how important that freedom can be to championing democracy and human rights.

On the question of the budget, the Council of Europe is a relatively small institution in the great continental scheme of things, but it has had a staggeringly large impact for its size, and I believe that it provides very good value for money. The United Kingdom should pursue an active and successful chairmanship of the Council, as that would be in our national interest, as well as in the interest of our citizens and citizens across the whole continent of Europe.

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[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) is my next-door neighbour across the Trent, so I hope that there will be a sort of symmetry to our speeches; I will balance his speech for the purposes of the Gainsborough Standard. He is, of course, an ornament of Parliament, not least because he succeeds in irritating his own side as much as us, which is very good.

You, too, are an ornament of Parliament, Mr Deputy Speaker. You are also a former member of the Council of Europe. We all recall you often flying the flag for Britain on a Friday when everybody else had gone home. We are very grateful for all the work you did in the delegation. I am not sure that anyone has yet thanked you, so I wanted to put that on the record. In the Council of Europe we are restricted to three-minute contributions. I cannot promise that I will take as little as that, but I shall try to be as quick as possible because I know that others want to speak.

I am very proud to be a member of the Council of Europe. When we go there we see some marvellous history laid out in the foyer, with pictures of Winston Churchill speaking to one of the first sessions, if not the first. There is something very noble about this concept which, as we know, arose out of the second world war. The Council of Europe was a tremendously powerful mechanism in saying that we were never again going to have the horrors of Nazism and fascism. We should also be very proud of what the immediate past generation of members of the Council of Europe achieved in the whole transition to democracy in eastern Europe, of what the Council of Europe has achieved in eastern Europe and of how we are really defending human rights in eastern Europe, where there have been the most appalling and profound abuses, as there were in western Europe before 1945. To me, that is what the Council of Europe, the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act 1998 are all about; it is about the fundamental freedoms that, from Magna Carta onwards, we have built up in this country. We have become a beacon of those freedoms. We all know what they are: freedom of expression and of religion, the right to privacy and a family life—wonderful, basic freedoms. That is what I believe Winston Churchill was talking about, but what we have now seen is judicial creep way beyond anything ever envisaged when the convention was agreed.

There is a misunderstanding about this issue. Nobody on the Government Benches is suggesting that we should leave the convention. I am proud of the convention that we signed in 1949. All we are attacking is the incorporation of the convention into our law under the Human Rights Act 1998, which was passed by the Labour Government. That is our gripe. Nobody is denying that we should be a member of the Council of Europe or that we want to reform it, but this has become a very serious issue. If one looks on the front pages of the newspapers today one will see, just to take one issue, that the population of this country is due to rise within 20 years to 70 million people—a figure that the Labour Government said was quite unacceptable and would never be reached. Two thirds of that increase comes from immigration—that will put a severe strain not only on services but on good relations and human rights. This issue of immigration is therefore important.

If the Minister for Immigration were here and were allowed to speak openly about what is happening in his Department, I am sure that he would have to admit that he is severely constrained in what he can do to deal with this problem of immigration in order to foster good race relations because of the incorporation of the convention into our law. Although he cannot tell us, because he is a Minister, what is going on inside his Department, we have, as I mentioned earlier in a couple of interventions, now heard from a former Minister for Immigration. His diary really is worth revealing because it tells us in great detail what is going on. This is not some right-winger speaking: it is a former Labour Minister—a person who voted for the 1998 Act, was then put in a position of responsibility and was, frankly, driven mad by it.

[Martin Horwood]

I am tempted to discuss the issue of immigration and suggest that it is more to do with providing the skills in the right jobs, as that is what is drawing in immigration—that is something that the coalition is tackling.

The hon. Gentleman talks about getting rid of the Human Rights Act, which effectively means taking the ability to interpret the convention out of the hands of British judges and giving it back to European judges. Does he not trust British judges or does he think that by doing that we will somehow not be implementing it as fully as we would be if it were in British law?

[Mr Leigh]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman because this addresses precisely the point I want to make. I believe that the convention as we understood and implemented it from the late 1940s to the late 1990s was about the protection of fundamental rights. It was understood to be a matter of last resort. If somebody was really dissatisfied with the way that their human rights had been treated in British courts, for example in the immigration process, they could, if they wanted—frankly, after they had been removed—take a case to Strasbourg. What has happened since then—since we have incorporated it—is that we have had a tidal wave of cases coming to our own judges, and they have interpreted the convention in such a way that makes it very difficult for Ministers to do their job. Members of Parliament might not worry about whether it is bad to make it difficult for Ministers to do their job, but Ministers are responsible to this Parliament. This is the democratic forum of the British people. This Parliament should be supreme—not the courts.

If hon. Members do not believe me, they should listen to what Mr Woolas said. I have already mentioned the case. For years we had been working on both sides of the House against forced marriages and we had been trying to raise the age of women coming here. I mentioned in my intervention on the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) how that had been overturned by judges. I ask hon. Members to listen to this quote from Phil Woolas, the former Labour Minister for Immigration, which directly mentions the European Court. He said:

“We have four people wanted for genocide in Rwanda (there are 100 but the four are the test case)”—

so we have here four people who are wanted for quite serious crimes, so not very nice people. The quote continues:

“The magistrates had agreed to extradite them but the High Court had disagreed on the grounds that they would not get a fair trial in Rwanda.

I am advised”

by my civil servants

“that I should grant six months leave to remain in the UK ‘in the hope that the legal system in Rwanda improves’.

I had asked why we couldn’t try them in The Hague and was told as they were not British, I couldn’t send them there!

So a person accused of committing genocide in an ‘unsafe country’ (which country that has genocide is safe!) simply has to get into an ECHR country and they will get away with it. The ECHR is providing cover for people who commit genocide. Madness.”

That is not me speaking—it is a Labour Minister.

I will refer to another case and then I will stop. There were many others, and I recommend that hon. Members read what is going on inside the Department, because it is our only insight into what is actually happening across Ministers’ desks.

“The French Navy detained some drug smugglers in the middle of the Atlantic. It took 14 days to get back to France because the ship was on patrol. But the…gangster took the French government to court for unlawful detention under the ECHR, saying he should have been dealt with sooner!...The smugglers have been released…I have now asked why we can’t change the law to stop this abuse but the MoD don’t want me to as they are using the same defence to protect six British soldiers, now back in the UK, who are being sued from Iraq after being accused of unlawfully detaining suspect insurgents in Basra…So, we cannot detain suspected gangsters at sea and the Human Rights Act applies in Basra. Unbelievable.”

That is not me speaking; it is a Labour Minister.

That is what we have come to, and it is now affecting national policy in a very profound way. The House may not agree with me about immigration, but I think it is a very serious issue for our country. We have to grapple with it if we are going to ensure good race relations in the future. I believe that a population of 70 million is unsustainable. You may not agree with that, Mr Deputy Speaker, but surely you agree that this House, and Ministers responsible to us, should have the right and the power to deal with it; you do not believe that at all times their hands should be shackled behind their back because of a European convention that has been interpreted in such a way that it goes way beyond what anyone envisaged when it was set up.

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[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!”

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[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins). I am sure that football supporters throughout the United Kingdom would echo his remarks—as an England supporter, I certainly endorse what he said—and I am sure that everyone shares his concern about how our beloved game is being administered internationally.

I have already paid tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter) for his sterling work in leading the British delegation to the Council of Europe, but I would also like to pay tribute to Opposition Members who have led the delegation while I have been a member of it. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who is the chairman of the Council of Europe’s migration committee, on which I have the pleasure of serving, for all his hard work in that capacity, and in such an important field. It has been instructive and interesting for me to see how other European Union member states and their representatives view migration. For my part, I am concerned that the questions of who should be permitted to cross borders, who should be permitted to reside in countries, settle in them and become citizens, and who should be removed from them should principally be a matter for member states’ Parliaments and not determined by European law. We must be careful to ensure that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights does not obtrude unnecessarily in the field of migration.

I want to make three points about what lies ahead for the British chairmanship of the Council of Europe. The first concerns the European Union. I have already made one speech in the Chamber about the European Union this week, and Members might feel that one is enough for a week—I certainly feel it is. However, it is not me who is bringing the European Union into this debate; rather, the European Union is bringing itself in. It seeks to accede to the European convention on human rights and wants Members of the European Parliament to participate in some of the Council of Europe’s activities. I have many reservations of principle about the accession of the European Union to the Council of Europe and the European convention on human rights. I am not clear on what basis the EU seeks to accede to the convention, because every other member of the convention is a nation state and the EU says that it is not one. I am not clear as to whether the change is needed, because the member states of the European Union are already members of the Council of Europe and the European Union already has a charter of fundamental rights, to which the treaty of Lisbon gives legal effect, covering much the same ground as the European convention on human rights. As a result, the prevailing legal position on human rights in Europe could be complicated by the two sets of conventions.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Clappison]

I will certainly give way to the hon. Gentleman, who is an enthusiast for the convention if nothing else.

[Martin Horwood]

Surely the point is that the European Union institutions should not be beyond the reach of the convention. Is the hon. Gentleman not missing the opportunity to take the European Commission to the European Court?