Council of Europe (UK Chairmanship)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:27 pm on 27 October 2011.

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Photo of Edward Leigh Edward Leigh Chair, Public Accounts Commission, Chair, Public Accounts Commission 4:27, 27 October 2011

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 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.