Council of Europe (UK Chairmanship)

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I ask the hon. Lady simply to look at the sheer volume of cases before the Court. We argue that there needs to be a system under which the principle of subsidiarity, which the Court is already supposed to observe, is given greater weight. That will require not just a United Kingdom view from the chair, but consensus among member states. We are talking to colleagues throughout the Council of Europe about the right way forward, because what we are seeking to do certainly does not come from any hostility to the Court as an institution. In fact, concerns about the backlog, the case load and the damage being done to its reputation are widely shared not only among state parties, but by the secretary-general and the authorities in the Council itself.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Mr Lidington]

I will give way once more, then I really am going to make some progress.

[Michael Connarty]

I thank the Minister. I am trying to be helpful, because I totally agree with and follow his logic on the backlog, but when he states that the Court was never meant to be a court of appeal against a national court’s ruling, surely that logic is wrong, because there cannot be an allowance, for example, for the Ukrainian court that put the country’s former President in jail for carrying out policies that its Parliament had decided. There must be somewhere for people to appeal on human rights grounds, and that is the Court. I presume the Minister meant that the Court could not provide redress in all cases—but in specific cases of such high contestability there must be a court that is above national, political courts.

[Mr Lidington]

I do not differ from the hon. Gentleman in principle, but we need effective criteria that everyone—from the judges of the Court to the states parties—will accept as enabling the Court to differentiate properly between cases that should be considered at that European level and those that ought to have been dealt with according to the legal systems of states parties that have demonstrated good traditions of respecting human rights.

All this means that there is a clear and pressing case for reform, and all 47 members of the Council of Europe have already signed up to a reform process. The goal of our chairmanship is to drive forward the changes that began in Council meetings at Interlaken and Izmir, and to agree a final package that makes a real impact on the operation of the Court.

I announced, in a written statement to Parliament yesterday, our full set of chairmanship priorities, following my discussion on Tuesday with our friend and ally the Council of Europe secretary-general Thorbjørn Jagland. My statement set out more detail on the reform for which we are pressing. It included proposals that would make the Court more efficient to enable it to deal with its backlog of applications, would reinforce the idea that the Court’s role was a subsidiary one, with states having the primary responsibility to protect convention rights, and would ensure that the best possible processes were in place for nominating judges to the Court, and that the Court’s case law was clear and consistent.

How we will do that? Reform requires the agreement of all 47 member states, and there is no getting round that fact, so we will accord the highest political priority to securing consensus on the necessary reforms by means of a political declaration at the end of our chairmanship. That declaration would record political agreement to a package of reforms and set the scene for later implementation under subsequent chairmanships. The declaration, we hope, will include, where necessary, amendments to the procedural sections of the convention, and provide the basis for a decision of the Committee of Ministers, to be adopted at its annual meeting on 14 May 2012.

No one should be in any doubt that delivering those goals will take time and a lot of intensive and complicated negotiations, but I do believe that the winds of change are in our favour, and if we achieve the reform that we seek, we stand to gain a stronger Council of Europe and a more effective Court, focused better on real substantive breaches of human rights.

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[Sandra Osborne]

I totally agree with my right hon. Friend, and I will come on to that subject later in my speech. If the truth be told, I confess that I was pretty ignorant myself before I became a member of the delegation. That is probably an indictment of me, but also of the level of discussion that we have on the subject in this Parliament. We should take the opportunity to hold more discussions such as the one we are having today.

All the evidence suggests that mankind—I use that word advisedly—learns very little from experience, and very slowly, concerning the exercise of power and the protection of the weak, but at least there is hope when dialogue leads to international treaties. So, if we believe that human rights are at the centre of our foreign policy— sometimes I wonder, although I welcome the Minister’s statement to that effect—we should be prepared to support the European convention on human rights without equivocation.

The hon. Member for North Dorset referred to the meeting earlier this week between the UK delegation and Mr Thorbjørn Jagland, the secretary-general of the Council of Europe. The secretary-general commented that the UK was well placed to use the chairmanship to take forward reform of the European Court of Human Rights, because we started it and we have the diplomatic capacity to gather support. In the six months available, I hope that that proves to be the case. I am aware that a great deal of groundwork has already taken place—although, as the Minister has said, securing consensus among 47 states is a tall order. It is right that that should be the UK’s main priority, however. Everyone agrees that reform is needed, not least because of the huge backlog in applications.

As has already been said, there is also a tension in some people’s minds between the judgments of the Court and national sovereignty. That was illustrated in the UK with the judgment on prisoner voting rights. I was disappointed by the level of debate in the UK on that issue, as it undermined the purpose of the convention, which is to promote human rights. Whatever people’s views on whether prisoners should have the right to vote, the debate was characterised by inaccurate, populist and, in some cases, xenophobic nonsense. If there is a genuine problem—and I think we all agree that there is—with the Court intervening inappropriately in national affairs, let us deal with it in a measured way that promotes subsidiarity where appropriate, instead of bursting out in moral panic.

It is not unknown for the UK to lecture other countries about human rights, and quite rightly so—in fact, I hope the Government will take the chance to raise human rights issues with President Santos of Colombia when he visits the UK later this month—but we should practise what we preach if we want to be seen as an example to other countries. I hope we do, and I hope we are.

Although the reform of the European Court of Human Rights is the main priority, I would like to comment briefly on some of the other priorities that the UK Government have set for our chairmanship. Combating discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity across Europe is a very welcome objective, and I believe the work we have done in the UK stands us in good stead—particularly the measures in the Equality Act 2010 and the right to civil partnership, which were passed in the last Parliament. I am pleased to say that the Scottish Government—believe me, I do not often compliment them—are currently consulting on taking this a step further with the introduction of gay marriage. I am pleased that we can give a lead to other member states on this, and I am glad the Government have made it a priority—not gay marriage, but tackling discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

[Michael Connarty]

It has always struck me that in some other countries—this is certainly true where my son lives—people who are heterosexual can register not a civic partnership but the fact that they are de facto partners. That means that when one dies, the pension will transfer automatically to the other member of that de facto partnership. In this country, however, for a heterosexual couple who do not go through a formal legal marriage, either in a church or elsewhere, the pension dies with the partner. If we are talking about human rights, surely when people put themselves into a de facto partnership of that kind, they should have all the rights of those who go through a formal marriage.

[Sandra Osborne]

I do not disagree with my hon. Friend, but I would say that heterosexual people have the option to marry, which gay people have not had in the past. It is right that it should be afforded to them.

[Michael Connarty]

But they have a civic partnership?

[Sandra Osborne]

There is a civic partnership that was not previously available—

[Michael Connarty]

But heterosexuals cannot—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. We are not conducting a conversation; this is a debate.

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[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate, primarily because I have been calling for a debate on this subject for a good few weeks. I suspect that the Minister may have become sick of hearing from me. I thank right hon. and hon. Members who supported me last week in my pitch to the Backbench Business Committee. They clearly recognised the importance of holding such a topical debate at the time of our chairmanship. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter) for his leadership and his insightful comments. As a new Member of Parliament, I know that he has a great deal of experience of these matters, and I think that all new Members have a lot to learn from him.

I thank the Minister for his opening remarks, and for the written statement that he published yesterday. There is, of course, much to discuss when it comes to our chairmanship and its priorities, and this afternoon is the right time for that discussion.

All Members who have spoken so far have touched on Britain’s strong historic links with the Council of Europe and the drafting of the original European convention on human rights. In view of those historic links, I think that Britain must now play a central role in reforming the COE to ensure that the sovereignty of nation states is respected and the British interest is put first. I say that partly in the context of this week’s debates on European affairs. On Monday we saw exactly what happens when power-hungry supranational institutions simply go too far: the public become somewhat disenfranchised, and the democratic deficit created becomes slightly harder to remedy. The public have a view on that. I think there is a genuine danger that if action is not taken during our chairmanship, the country could find itself sleepwalking down a path towards the stripping away of more of our powers and more important decisions will eventually be taken out of our hands.

No doubt there is unity throughout the House on the need to safeguard rights to a fair trial, respect for family life, protection from slavery, freedom of thought and other great values of which this country and British democracy have been staunch defenders over the years. However, the European system of human rights that is reinforced by the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights and their related institutions lacks accountability and democratic legitimacy.

I believe that central to that problem is the way in which the European Court of Human Rights operates. Over the years, it has effectively become a final court of appeal for those who feel that there are human rights-related grounds that their national courts have wrongly dismissed. I think we all appreciate the importance of that. Recent statistics from the court reveal that in 83% of cases it finds that violation has taken place, contrary to decisions made nationally. The hon. Member for North Dorset mentioned the backlog of cases, and I think there is consensus on the fact that the numbers are alarming. I welcome my hon. Friend’s highly practical suggestion that people should be brought in to read through the paperwork and sort out the situation. While the figures for Britain are better than average, with the Court finding that a violation has taken place in 61% of cases, it is astonishing that in so many cases the Court and its judges rule against judgments made by very able, experienced and qualified judges in the British courts. Moreover, given that section 2 of the Human Rights Act 1998 explicitly binds our courts into the European human rights system so they already give effect to the convention in European case law, it is even more unreasonable for Europe to dismiss so many of the decisions made by our courts.

Politicians will always have their differences with the judiciary and the decisions made by judges, but many of the decisions made in Strasbourg are fundamentally contrary to British values and the British interest. That leads me to question the accountability and legitimacy of the Court.

This situation is made even more challenging to our democracy because no real mechanisms are in place for Parliament to reverse these European Court judgments. Such mechanisms are in place for decisions by domestic courts, however. Earlier this year when the English courts highlighted an anomaly in laws relating to police bail arrangements, Parliament was able to initiate and pass emergency legislation: the Police (Detention and Bail) Act 2011. Just as courts act independently to hold the legislature and the Executive to account, in this case Parliament and the Government were able to hold the judiciary to account. That does not seem to be possible for decisions made in the European Court, however. As has been mentioned, last February the House passed a motion sending a clear message to Europe that it did not believe it was right of the European Court of Human Rights to demand that we scrap our laws and give convicted prisoners the right to vote, yet Europe is still insisting that the judgments of the European Court takes precedence over the laws passed and motions agreed by this Parliament, and is still saying that we must grant prisoners the right to vote.

[Michael Connarty]

I have been listening to the hon. Lady expand on her point. I think she has got the matter wrong. When the European Court of Human Rights makes a judgment, it passes it back to the country of origin, which must then make proposals to try to fit in with that judgment. I understand that there is no intention on the part of the Government—supported by the Opposition, I hope—to give up their right in this matter entirely. They are being asked to define in which circumstances it is appropriate for someone to be not only incarcerated but deprived of their right to vote.

[Priti Patel]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks.

In February we debated the sovereignty and decision making of this House in relation to a particular judgment. By refusing to accept the sovereignty of our Parliament and the democratic decision making of this House, Europe is demonstrating a lack of legitimacy and democratic accountability, which I find astonishing given that the Council of Europe was established precisely to promote democracy. Therefore, in my view, attacking our Parliament and seeking to undermine our democracy is simply counter-productive.

The prisoner votes issue is just one well-known example of the problem—and it is still ongoing. There are other similar Strasbourg decisions, however, such as in the Sufi and Elmi case, where Britain was prevented on human rights grounds from deporting two individuals back to Somalia, despite their being responsible for a very serious spate of crimes, including threats to kill, robbery and dealing in class A drugs. We should bear in mind that such decisions can end up setting a legal precedent, so they can impact on subsequent deportation cases. In the Sufi and Elmi case, human rights were used as an excuse to allow people to remain in Britain.

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[Mr Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

I wish to touch briefly on three issues. The first relates to the European convention on human rights, which is the first priority listed on the briefing paper issued by the Government on the UK’s chairmanship of the Council of Europe. Article 5 of the convention sets out the right to freedom. Article 6 sets out the right to a fair trial. A constituent of mine has been held in prison in Malta for more than two years. Another constituent has just faced a highly questionable trial in Lille in France, and he was held for two years before the trial without any right to freedom. Malta and France are both signatories to the convention on human rights.

When I started to look into the background, I wrote to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to request a breakdown of the number of UK citizens who have been held for more than 10 months without trial in countries that are signatories to the convention on human rights and members of the Council of Europe. Initially, those at the FCO said that they did not have a breakdown for all 47 countries and that it would be unreasonable to expect them to do all that work because it would be very expensive. However, not wishing to be unhelpful, they asked me to name the countries I was interested in. I named four: Greece, Spain, France and Malta—the latter two for obvious reasons. It was a freedom of information request and they complied with it.

Malta is holding five UK citizens who have been in prison for more than 10 months without trial, and Malta is a signatory to the convention on human rights. France is holding 12 UK citizens who have been in prison for more than 10 months without trial, and France is a signatory to the convention on human rights. Indeed, my constituent was held in France for more than two years. Spain is holding 43 UK citizens who have been in prison for more than 10 months without trial, and Spain is a signatory to the convention on human rights. Article 5, which sets out the right to freedom, is being breached by these countries. The FCO said that it could not specify the number of UK citizens being held in Greece because that number was so small that doing so could identify the person concerned. I did not quite understand that, but the fact of the matter is that Greece is also clearly in breach of article 5.

In the case of the constituent who was tried in Lille last week, I maintain that article 6 has been breached because I do not believe that he has had a fair trial. In fact, I am afraid that his situation was probably worsened by the intervention of a British Member of Parliament seeking to bring about the trial. The man has been sentenced to five years in prison, fined €10,000 and asked to repay something akin to the debt of Greece—€5 million. He does not have that because he has lost his home and his family; he has lost the lot.

During the UK’s chairmanship of the Council of Europe, I want the Government to hold to the fire the feet of each and every country that is a member of the Council and is holding UK citizens, or any other citizens for that matter, for long periods of time without trial. It is a clear breach of the convention. Many of those countries, France in particular, are preaching to the United Kingdom and trying to tell us that we must give prisoners voting rights. We had that debate in this Chamber and reached a sovereign decision as a sovereign Parliament. I explained that in person to the Human Rights Commissioner, Thomas Hammarberg, the last time we were in Strasbourg. I said, “Tom, you must understand that this is a sovereign Parliament. This is not a Government decision, but a decision taken in the House of Commons by elected Members. We have decided that we do not believe that we have a duty to give convicted prisoners voting rights.” While that is an issue, we are told that other countries can hold citizens without trial for very long periods in breach of the convention.

I would like my right hon. Friend to take to the chairmanship and to Ministers this clear issue and say that we will not budge one inch until every country holding any citizen for an indeterminate period without trial has complied properly with the convention.

[Michael Connarty]

I just want to get the hon. Member to clarify and put on the record the fact that all of these countries have not only signed, but ratified and implemented the convention, because there are many countries who sign conventions, never ratify them and never, therefore, implement them.

[Mr Gale]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is absolutely right. The implication is that because we have signed the convention, we are implementing it. My understanding is that Malta, Spain and France have implemented it, but I am open to challenge on Greece— I ought to know but do not. France certainly makes a big issue of the situation and is very communautaire, just as long as it wants to be, but on this issue it is in clear breach and needs to be told that it is.

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[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale). Having been in the Council of Europe, and in this House for so long, and having watched his endeavours in the Council of Europe at the moment, it is amazing that he is still enthusiastic about searching out the right wording and practice in the things he is involved in. I am sure that he was the same 25 years ago. My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) referred to me as enthusiastic, but I have been here for a mere 19 years. I hope that when I have been here for as long as the hon. Gentleman I am still as enthusiastic for the fight.

The fight is for the correct implementation of the principles behind the Council of Europe. I may not always take the example of the hon. Member for North Thanet on how he approaches things, and hopefully we will be at the meeting seeking the compromise that I suggested might be found between him and the author of the original report, which was deeply flawed in the way it was expressed. I hope that we will work together across the party divide on these matters.

It is a pity the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) has gone. I am not sure whether she is a member of the delegation, but certainly some members on the Government side do not take up their place, and she might be able to learn quite a lot by volunteering to take one of the places that are not being actively filled at the moment. I am sure she would find it enlightening and educational, as we all do. The delegation, although we may come from different angles, is genuinely still the bedrock of debates in the Council of Europe. Delegates are often there at the beginning; they are there at the end of the day, which might be 8 o’clock at night; and they are often there on Friday when most people have decided to go home. We want to take part in debates and make our views known.

[Oliver Heald]

The hon. Gentleman will recall that he and I were both there on the Friday of the last part-session, disagreeing with each other. I thought he would like to know that I am here, and that I do not entirely agree with him today.

[Michael Connarty]

We came in together, and hopefully they will carry us out together. I recall that we also came to the House in the same year.

It is absolutely incredible that a court as important as the Court of Human Rights is clogged up by a type of bureaucracy that could not be imagined in the most disorganised country in the world. The simplest cases that will clearly never be correctly allocated to the Court have to be judged by a full bench of judges before they can say, “No, we can’t deal with this.” There is no sifting process and no filter process. No Committee in this House would run if every Member had to gather every day, look at every paper proposed, and come before the Committee to decide whether it could even discuss it. That is what the Court is about at the moment. Anything we can do under our chairmanship to bring in a filtering system whereby one judge or some other method is used to say, “This is still correct to stay on the list and others must be sent back to the courts of the national jurisdictions or rejected”, is long overdue.

I will talk later about the Human Rights Act 1998 in the context of individual countries. It is a myth that the Court can make a country implement its judgment just by lifting the judgment made in the Court and transposing it into the Acts of Parliament of this country. It is not the European Union, after all. I see that the Minister for Europe is here, and he recognises that that can happen with European Union regulations and all the other things that come in, and we have to just get on with it because we have signed away some of those rights—but not at Council of Europe level. It has to come back and be looked at by this sovereign Parliament, which then makes a judgment on what amendments to make that would implement it. I hope that we never move away from that.

There is lots of talk saying that our Human Rights Act is somehow a transcription of the convention on human rights and the judgments of the courts. I hope that it is, in fact, an attempt by this sovereign Parliament to implement the human rights that we all hold so dear for our country and for every other country. If it is not correct and needs to be amended in some way, that is our right as a sovereign Parliament, but we must not get into the situation where we can overturn the human rights that are available to people in Council of Europe countries just because we believe that it will satisfy the feelings of our constituents.

I held a very excellent debate about human rights and family rights. On family rights, yes, there is no doubt that people are angry because that is used as a plea for someone not to be sent back to some other country. But when we come down to the fundamentals and someone is asked, “Do you think that family rights are due to all of us?”, most people would say yes. We then have to decide why it is not applicable to someone who may come from another country. Sometimes, if we throw out that basic judgment that family rights are available to all of us, and must therefore be available to anyone under our jurisdiction, we destroy something very important in what we have fought for, for political gain and for a feeling of anger rather than for a judgment of what is correct.

[Bob Stewart]

I have a question because I am slightly ignorant on the procedures. If a judgment came back to this House and this House decided that it would not accept it, where do we stand then?

[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.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend is right: there has to be unanimity within the EU before accession can take place. Further, there must also be an important role for our Parliament. Under the European Union Act 2011, once agreement is reached on the detail of EU accession, the Government would be required to place that decision before each House of Parliament, and there would have to be a debate and a vote in this place and in the House of Lords before the UK could ratify EU accession to the COE. So not only the British Government but Parliament have to agree before that can happen.

The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) asked, first, whether British Ministers would report to the Parliamentary Assembly during the six months of our chairmanship. The answer is yes. I have agreed to attend the session in Edinburgh in November and those in Strasbourg in February and April next year to report on the progress made under our chairmanship.

The hon. Lady also asked for examples of cases in which the Court had substituted its judgment for that of national courts. An issue that came up in the Interlaken declaration on the removal of people from a country when their case had been properly considered by the national courts is key here, as all 47 countries agreed that the Court was looking in too much detail at matters that had been quite properly considered by national authorities. In recent judgments against not only us but Sweden, the Court has checked findings of fact made by national courts in cases about removing people from the country. For example, it has insisted on considering the applicant’s credibility or family situation, but those are not matters that should be considered at the European level.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary went to Izmir, and the declaration adopted at that conference in April called for a stricter approach to interim measures under rule 39, which, as the hon. Lady knows, is often used to halt deportations, with the Court intervening only exceptionally if cases have been considered by fair and effective national procedures. I hope that the marker put down by all 47 countries at Izmir also gives some comfort to my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton South (Mr Binley) and for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and others who have expressed particular concern about the impact of Court judgments on immigration policy.

My hon. Friends the Members for Northampton South and for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) asked about the appointment of judges and whether the Interlaken process would diminish the democratic element regarding the election of judges to the Strasbourg court. The key part of the process that requires reform is the national procedures by which each state selects the list of three candidates whom it proposes to the Parliamentary Assembly. If we get this right, concerns about the quality of judges should fall away. We have welcomed the establishment of a panel of the Council of Ministers to ensure that all states put forward three well-qualified candidates for those posts and it has already taken France to task on this very point. We are driving forward work on a recommendation that would lay down standards for national procedures in all 47 states, and I am pleased to report that according to the Parliamentary Assembly itself the United Kingdom is a beacon of good practice in this regard.

My hon. Friends the Members for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and for Gainsborough asked about the recommendation by the Bill of Rights commission that the Strasbourg Court should consider only the most important cases. Our position as a Government on this is that the Court should focus on areas where the convention is not being properly applied or where there is a genuine need at the European level for authoritative guidance on its interpretation. Where member states are applying the convention effectively, the Court should intervene less.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough also raised a number of concerns about immigration. He will understand if I do not comment on individual cases, especially on the basis of Mr Woolas’s memoirs. My hon. Friend said that his arguments were not so much about the principles embodied in the convention—indeed, he spoke up in favour of the convention—but about the means by which it is implemented and applied in this country. I take his comments in that spirit. I remind him again of the work of the independent commission and encourage him to make representations to Sir Leigh Lewis and his colleagues. I would also recommend, if he has not done so already, that he have a look at the very thought-provoking speech made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General at Lincoln’s Inn on Monday, in which, among other things, he discussed the relationship of the United Kingdom Supreme Court to the European Court of Human Rights and indicated how his thinking was developing on that matter.

My hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) made several criticisms—more, I think, of the implementation of the convention in this country than of the convention per se. I took her points seriously. When she and other hon. Friends make those criticisms, they are speaking on behalf of large numbers of constituents who have expressed concerns. But I would caution my hon. Friend and the House about one of the statistics that was deployed—the claim that the Court finds a violation in 87% of all cases and in 61% of cases against the United Kingdom. These proportions are only of the cases where there is a judgment. We must remember that 97% of cases against the UK are thrown out without even having their merits considered, because they are ruled inadmissible. If we look at the raw figures for 2010 and 2011 so far, the Court has decided 1,713 cases that were brought against the United Kingdom, but only 33 of those 1,713 were decided by a judgment; the rest were simply ruled inadmissible by the Court or struck out completely. Given that only 33 went to a judgment, it is not wholly surprising that a relatively high proportion of those 33 cases were decently arguable and led to the finding of a violation.

My hon. Friend also spoke about how one set of rights was seen to be overruled by another set. I know that comes up frequently at public events. As the House knows, and members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe know all too well, the convention expresses a number of different human rights and it is a clear principle that where those rights conflict there is a duty on the countries that are party to the convention to balance those rights in a way that is just and proportionate in the circumstances of a particular case. There is a legitimate debate about where the right to take a final decision in any case should lie—with Strasbourg, with domestic courts, with legislatures or with the Executive in a particular country. Then there is a further argument about whether, in any individual circumstances, whichever authority it is has achieved the right balance in finding a judgment that is right, just and proportionate. We will never get away completely from that type of argument, any more than we do when we read reports of judgments in domestic civil and criminal cases.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) asked whether I would support Finnish and Spanish Ministers’ work on local government reform. I can guarantee that the Government will work towards a more effective and efficient role for the Council of Europe in supporting local and regional democracy. We want to see the Council’s work in this field streamlined and more carefully targeted. We are looking forward to Mr Chavez’s report and we will ensure that its recommendations are given serious consideration.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale) raised constituency cases as illustrations of a general complaint that countries party to the convention allow people to be detained for far too long without charge or trial. He fights fiercely on behalf of his constituents whom he believes have been treated unjustly. He knows from discussions that he and I have had that the individuals concerned can make an application to Strasbourg regarding an alleged violation of articles 5 and 6 by their detention without trial. The problem is that the text of the convention does not define what a reasonable period of such detention is. I am sure that my hon. Friend will continue to campaign vigorously on this matter.

My hon. Friend also asked about a convention on transfrontier broadcasting. My understanding is that the European Union has exclusive competence in this area, so there would be problems with an EU member state signing a Council of Europe convention on the matter. On that basis, the Committee of Ministers has agreed to discontinue work on that convention, pending further consultation. However, I will consider my hon. Friend’s point further, consult colleagues in other Departments that are more directly responsible for broadcasting policy and then write to him on the matter.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and Falkirk—

[Michael Connarty]

East Falkirk.

[Mr Lidington]

I do not wish to accuse him of having further territorial ambitions.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) asked about two other conventions. On the European framework convention on youth rights, the Government still take the view that we do not recognise the need for such a convention as all the matters described in the draft recommendation are already covered by the UN convention on the rights of the child, which actually goes further than the proposed Council of Europe convention. On the convention on the protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, we agree completely. That is an appalling crime and a form of child sexual abuse. Tackling it is an absolute priority for the Government. The convention sets standards to ensure that countries criminalise sexual exploitation and the abuse of children and adopt similar standards of investigation and prosecution of these crimes. Officials across a number of Departments are currently considering in detail the steps that would be required to ratify the convention. I am sure that a report will be made to the House as soon as decisions have been taken.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw asked about next week’s cyber-space conference in London. I have been unable to check the guest list, but the conference will encompass the issue of cyber-crime and a lot more, too. It will deal with economic growth, the social benefits of using cyber-space, safe and reliable access to it, and international security.

My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South asked about the European Court’s backlog. We certainly aim to ensure that a time scale is set for the implementation of any measures agreed during our chairmanship, including clearing inadmissible and repetitive cases from the backlog. We will also learn from the experience of previous attempts to reform the Strasbourg Court. I completely take the point that we must not be timid in the measures we take. We will ensure that the long-term context is considered when agreeing short and medium-term measures. I very much hope that he will be able to see the fruits of the work that he supported today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) raised a number of issues, most of which related to the implementation of the convention in this country. Like him, I have had some cases of forced marriage in my constituency surgery, and I think that the basic principle is less about the convention or the Human Rights Act, and more about the fact that it is a principle of any British court or immigration tribunal that evidence given to a judge by one party must be shared with the other party. Like him, I have had the difficult situation in constituency cases where the person who says that she is the victim is afraid to speak out in public, but the immigration judge cannot be asked to take account of evidence in secret without the other side having the chance to respond to it and to rebut it.

The Council of Europe has been enormously successful in promoting common standards and values among its membership, not least as a result of the convention system, which the United Kingdom has had a hand in creating. It matters a great deal to the Government that human rights, democracy and the rule of law flourish in all member states of the Council of Europe. In this light, we see our chairmanship as a genuine opportunity to strengthen further a rules-based international system and to further British interests by strengthening the global rule of law and championing human rights.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of the UK’s Chairmanship of the Council of Europe.