European Affairs

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 7:27 pm on 16 June 2009.

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Photo of David Wilshire David Wilshire Conservative, Spelthorne 7:27, 16 June 2009

My hon. Friend mentions the anthem as well.

The Council of Europe is being upstaged by the European Union and the European Parliament. Vast sums of money are being spent on duplication of the human rights work done by the Council of Europe. We have this great institution of human rights, which the European Union is claiming for itself, and huge sums are being put into duplicating the work of spreading democracy. Since that is the core work of the Council of Europe, all donations—I shall come to finances in a moment—would be gratefully received. If the European Parliament and the European Union have money to spare, they might like to give it to the Council of Europe to do the work that it was set up to do and continues to do so well.

My next concern is the funding issue, which the British Government and all other Governments seem to have got stuck into. The budget has been cut year on year, while the cost of the European Court of Human Rights has gone up and up. As a result of underfunding, money has had to be diverted away from the other core work of the Council of Europe to fund the European Court of Human Rights. It is crucial that the administration of the Court and its logjam of casework is sorted out.

The third aspect of the Council of Europe that concerns me is the current internal wrangle as the Council plays politics with itself. If my hon. Friend Mr. Walter catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I know he will elaborate on that, so I shall not bore the House with the details. The dispute is about how to appoint the next secretary-general, which has to be done this year. All I will say—I hope the Government will be able to respond to this—is that the work of trying to appoint a new secretary-general has been badly handled by both sides.

I have some sympathy with what the Committee of Ministers is seeking to do. Among those pushing that agenda have been the British Government. I understand only too well what is being attempted, but if I may say so as gently as possible, the way in which the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has set about it is not very clever. That is where the row started. On the other hand, the Parliamentary Assembly has allowed itself to be confused between principles and personalities.

I have to go to an emergency meeting in Brussels on Thursday to talk to Ministers and see whether we can sort out the problem. I fear that we will not be able to do so, and that at the part-session in June there will be deadlock. I plead with the Government. After that has happened, as I fear it will—I do not see how we can stop it—some cool heads need to settle down and find a way out.

As I said a moment ago, I still believe that the Council of Europe matters. It matters to the new democracies that came out of the Soviet Union and elsewhere and are trying to set up a pluralist democracy, which we want to help them to do. The Council of Europe plays a big role in that.

I have mentioned the European Court of Human Rights. It is almost self-evident that the Council of Europe has an ongoing job in protecting human rights throughout Europe, and it does a great deal of work, often unseen and certainly unsung, trying to help countries that have come out of a different type of regime where the rule of law does not mean very much. We try our level best to help people get rid of the corrupt legal system that they have and to establish a legal system that we would be proud of. That is important work and it still matters.

The Council of Europe is still the only efficient, effective pan-European forum. Jest has been made of Iceland's bankruptcy. I have mentioned Norway and Switzerland. They are there already. They are part of that forum. Mention has been made of countries in the Balkans wanting to join the European Union. They are there already, and those are the sort of countries that we help. Mention has been made of Turkey. It is a major player in the Council of Europe. To the best of my knowledge, mention has not been made of the Caucasus and beyond, but those countries are there. Above all else to me—the Liberal spokesman mentioned that I have some connections with United Russia—the Russians are there. I could, if time allowed me, say a great deal about our relationship. In saying "our relationship", I am talking about British parliamentarians, not just the Conservative relationship with the Russians.

There is a choice to be made when we deal with people whose democracy is far from perfect, whose rule of law leaves a lot to be desired and whose human rights record is bad. We can cast them into the outer darkness and say, "You're awful. We don't want anything to do with you," or we can say "If people are asking for help, yes, we will help." There is one school of thought in Russia that wants to go it alone to build a Russian sphere of influence in the world, and there are those who say, "The best way to improve Russian democracy and the rule of law in our country is to integrate into the continent of Europe." I make no apologies for trying to help those Russians who want to do that, because that is the best way I can think of to share the values that we take for granted.

The Council of Europe has a further important role in conflict prevention. I know that we had a spectacular failure in conflict prevention because the Russians and the Georgians went to war together. Nevertheless, there are lessons to be learned from that, and there are lessons that we can apply to places such as Nagorno-Karabakh, because Armenia and Azerbaijan are both members of the Council of Europe, and incidentally, both are members of the group that I lead. We can do something, I hope, about Transnistria, because the Moldovans, Ukrainians, Russians and Romanians are all members of the Council of Europe.

The most important thing about the Council of Europe at present is the human rights commissioner. I was in New York not long ago, where I was talking about the Russian-Georgian conflict. The message that I got from the United Nations was that of all the things that have happened to try to sort out that dreadful mess, one stood out above all else: the human rights commissioner of the Council of Europe was somebody on the world stage who the United Nations thought was doing a magnificent job, and with whom it wanted to work more closely.

So we do matter. We do have a job to do, and we must take care of that. If we have problems and this Government and the next Government want to help, may I suggest a few things that they might like to consider? They might like to consider helping us build a higher profile for the Council of Europe, which is what the row about the secretary-general comes down to. If we have a higher profile, we will be taken more seriously and we will do more good. They could help us have a clearer focus, sort out what is core business and sort out the real geography of what we should be doing.

The Government could help us try to organise a new settlement between the Committee of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly, which is what has, in many ways, given rise to the ongoing political infighting that I mentioned. They could help us stand against the ever-increasing encroachment of the European Union. They could help us get them to take their tanks off our lawn and let us do what we are good at, and we will withdraw from the things that we are trying to do which we could safely leave to the European Union to get on with. They could help us by providing sensible funding. This is not a pitch for vastly more money. If only the problems with the European Court of Human Rights could be sorted out, the budget would look so much better for the rest of us.

We have problems. We have done a great deal. All I would say to the Government, and to my hon. Friend Mr. Francois when he becomes the Minister in due course, is please, please do not let the Council of Europe wither on the vine.