Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)]

Thank you, Mr Mundell. It is a genuine pleasure to see you in the Chair today.

I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in this lively and passionate debate. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) for securing it, and for her powerful list of the work done by the Council of Europe on everything from Ukraine to the death penalty. She mentioned the role of the ECHR, giving examples from Hillsborough to the Good Friday agreement. I thank her and other Members here today who are delegates to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe; it is a pleasure to engage with them regularly, and their work is crucial to our national interests.

In stark contrast to the polemical nonsense that we have just heard from the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend made a fundamental point, which is that fundamentally the ECHR and indeed the Council of Europe are British projects. It is the treaty of London that established them. I was very proud to see the treaty of London on display at the European Political Community summit two weeks after we came to power last year—and to see it at Blenheim Palace, with its strong historical associations to the man the shadow Minister was praising. I think he would have turned in his grave at some of the things that the shadow Minister was saying.

I also want to issue a general challenge: things cannot be set in aspic; they must evolve and maintain the confidence of all the British people and respond to the challenges and genuine issues that we face today. The point many colleagues made about the company that we keep is very important. It is not surprising to me at all to see Reform on the side of the likes of Russia and Belarus. It was very sad to hear some of the comments the shadow Minister made and that he was proud to support the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage). Perhaps, like so many Tories, he is simply preparing himself for a rebrand under a new banner.

There were some strong speeches about the perils of leaving the ECHR and challenging the many myths and fake news, some of which we sadly heard in this debate. One of those is about the democratic nature of the Council of Europe, which is one of the most democratic bodies in Europe. The European Court of Human Rights is elected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, including the UK judge, which flies in the face of what we heard from the shadow Minister and some others.

Other important points were made which have not previously had an adequate airing in debates on this subject. The arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) about the impact on national minorities were particularly strong. The ECHR ensures that all convention rights are enjoyed without discrimination, including on grounds such as race, language, religion or association with a national minority. Those crucial protections for national minorities could be lost if we left the ECHR. That is hugely important to Cornish and Welsh people and to those who speak our minority languages in the UK, including Cornish, Welsh, Gaelic and others. That is often forgotten.

Britain had a crucial and foundational role in establishing these institutions. Our pioneering Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, was a strong advocate for the body; Sir Winston Churchill was another leading proponent of the Council, while the British lawyer Sir David Maxwell Fyfe played a central role in drafting the text of the convention. The UK was among the first states to ratify the convention. We are proud of the moral, political and legal leadership that Britain showed in creating the organisation and drafting a convention that was designed to help Europe recover from the horrors of the second world war. I know that there is controversy today, but the Government fundamentally believe that since their creation both the Council of Europe and the ECHR have delivered significant benefits to British citizens, and continue to do so. We are not afraid to say that.

The Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton), spoke powerfully about the wider work of the Council of Europe and the ECHR. There are more than 200 conventions under the Council of Europe, tackling terrorism, cyber-crime and corruption, countering money laundering, protecting children from sexual exploitation, confronting violence against women and girls and combating human trafficking and organised crime. It ensures that medicines are safe and effective, encourages economic growth, good governance and the rule of law, and supports freedom of expression and ethical media.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

On the subject of criminal co-operation, before I came into Parliament I was an international liaison prosecutor. My job was to get evidence from overseas and help to get people overseas in Europe extradited to the UK for prosecution. That work relies on the ECHR, which underpins that legislation. Does the Minister share my concern about what some Members in this Chamber are proposing? Does he agree that they should be the ones who talk to a victim of rape about why her case cannot go forward because we cannot get the evidence from a European country, or tell a mother that we cannot get the murderer of her son back because we have left the ECHR?

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend makes some incredibly powerful and strong points, with which I concur. She highlights the very serious consequences that could come were we to leave the ECHR.

Before I turn to some of the other specific points, I want to compliment the wider work of the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly in expelling Russia following the illegal invasion of Ukraine, supporting Ukraine and seeking to hold Russia to account for the atrocities it has committed. I also compliment its work on the register of damage, the international claims commissions and the special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine established under the auspices of the Council. Those, along with the activities that my hon. Friend just raised, all matter to the British public and to British public life.

Of course, the ECHR plays a crucial role in our constitutional framework. It is an important pillar of the devolution settlements, it underpins the guarantees in the Good Friday agreement, and it supports the safety and security of British citizens by facilitating cross-border law enforcement and judicial co-operation. The ECHR is often presented as some sort of foreign imposition that does nothing to help British people. That literally could not be further from the truth. It has contributed significantly to the protection and enforcement of human rights and equality standards in the UK. We are very proud that a Labour Government incorporated the ECHR into domestic law—that was, of course, a decision of Westminster—by introducing the Human Rights Act 1998, which came into force 25 years ago last month.

The ECHR has had a massive impact. ECHR rulings in 1982 led to the end of corporal punishment in schools in the UK and to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland. As has been referenced, in 1999, following a landmark case brought by two British servicepeople dismissed from the armed forces simply for being gay, an ECHR ruling led to the law being changed to allow members of the armed forces to be open about their sexuality. Another very powerful example concerns the impact of the Hillsborough disaster, which the Prime Minister has done much to lead on in recent months. The families of the 97 who lost their lives relied on the ECHR’s right to life provision when they campaigned for the truth. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) spoke powerfully in this debate, including about the case of John Warboys. The benefits are not just historical; they affect live and significant cases that affect British people today.

Last, I turn to the question of reform. The strength of the convention is that, while the ECHR explicitly safeguards those at risk of harm, exclusion or discrimination, helps ordinary people to challenge unfair laws, and pushes Governments to respect rights, it is also entirely reasonable and appropriate for Governments consistently to consider whether the law, including the ECHR, is evolving to meet modern-day challenges, including on irregular migration, asylum and criminal justice. The ECHR was never designed to be set in stone and frozen forever in the time that it was created. That is why we are working with and engaging with European partners to look at ways in which reform can go forward, and why we are reviewing the way in which the ECHR is interpreted in UK domestic law.

[Sarah Russell]

Will the Minister give way?

[Stephen Doughty]

I will not, because I want to give time for my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge to wind up.

We need to ensure that we retain public confidence in our policies related to the ECHR, so we must look at where we can reform and evolve. Last week, the secretary-general of the Council of Europe was clear that he was open to discuss potential changes or adaptations—my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) raised that important point. Other Council of Europe member states share the UK’s view that the ECHR needs to evolve. We are talking to them about what might be possible, but we will not leave the ECHR. We recognise the hugely important role that it plays, and the hugely important role that the Council of Europe plays for people in this country. This is something that Britain was involved in at the start. It is not a foreign imposition; it plays an important role in the life of the British people. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions to this debate.