Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights Debate
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Paul Kohler
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Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights
Paul Kohler Excerpts(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) on securing this debate.
I am pleased to speak about the ECHR and the UK’s membership of the Council of Europe. Across the political spectrum, parties are flirting with withdrawal. It feels like Brexit déjà vu, with the same hollow promises of taking back control, the same disregard for facts and the same blindness to consequence. The siren voices who said leaving the EU would be easy are now saying the same about leaving the ECHR, and thereby the Council of Europe.
Lord Wolfson’s recent report to the Conservative leader, for example, offers a threadbare fig leaf, based on an extremely narrow reading of the law that downplays the legal obstacles and, by his own admission, ignores the political ones. As Lord Wolfson knows, withdrawal would not be a technical exercise in legislative drafting, but a rupture in the constitutional fabric that binds these islands together. Reform, not rupture, should be our guiding principle; the convention can be updated to serve a modern democracy without sacrificing its founding principles.
Two practical measures would command broad support. First, the UK could lead efforts to clarify the scope of key provisions, particularly article 8, so that domestic courts can apply them with greater predictability and closer regard to parliamentary intent. Secondly, rather than withdrawing, we could work with other Council of Europe members to update the living instrument doctrine, ensuring that the Court’s interpretation better reflects democratic consent and contemporary realities. Those would be acts not of retreat, but leadership, strengthening Britain’s international role as a principled champion of the rule of law.
Despite what Lord Wolfson says, there are serious legal barriers to withdrawal. As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Northern Ireland, I must warn of the profound risks to peace at home. The ECHR is embedded in the Scotland Act 1998, the Wales Act 2017, the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and the Good Friday agreement. Removing it would require overhauling devolution and entail legislative chaos. Turning to Northern Ireland, withdrawal would breach our international commitments, destabilise all communities, betray those who built peace and force renegotiation of the UK-EU trade and co-operation agreement.
I say this to the Tories, Reform and the Labour leadership: flirting with populism for political convenience endangers both our unity at home and our reputation abroad. As Brexit has shown, dismantling international commitments might sound easy and liberating—but, as we know to our cost, it is neither. It is a hugely damaging, expensive diversion that will only make our problems worse.
