Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights

Al Pinkerton Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Mundell. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I thank the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) for securing this important debate, and other Members—most of them, at least—for their contributions.

The Council of Europe is one of the post-war generation’s quiet triumphs. It was Winston Churchill, speaking in Zurich in 1946, who called for the creation of a Council of Europe to safeguard peace and freedom across our continent. Just three years later, the UK became one of its 10 founding members, and from the outset it represented something profoundly British: a belief that democracy, human rights and the rule of law should not stop at our own shores; they are international values.

Of course, the Council’s crowning achievement is the European convention on human rights. For decades, the convention and the European Court of Human Rights, which enforces it, have protected the rights of millions, including our own citizens—defending free speech and fair trials, advancing equality for women, securing justice for our military veterans, the LGBT community and those with disabilities, and holding Governments of every colour to account.

Today, the Council of Europe, membership of which is predicated on ECHR adherence, helps us to combat terrorism, cyber-crime, corruption and money laundering, as well as human trafficking and other forms of organised crime, yet there are some in this House who would turn their back on that legacy and those instruments. They would align us with Russia, a nation expelled from the Council of Europe in 2022 after its unlawful invasion of our close ally Ukraine. Russia, our clearest adversary—that is the company that some would have us keep.

[Sarah Russell]

The only other country that has willingly left the ECHR is Greece, under the fascist military dictatorship in 1969. Of course, once the dictatorship was overthrown, it rejoined. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is not company that we wish to be in?

[Dr Pinkerton]

It is truly shameful company for us to maintain, and there is nothing virtuous or patriotic about calling for our withdrawal.

Indeed, those calling for withdrawal, in pursuit of a single policy objective—ending illegal migration—should heed a deeper warning. In “A Man for All Seasons”, the playwright Robert Bolt, through the character of Sir Thomas More, observes of England:

“This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down…do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”

If we cut down the laws that shield even the unpopular or the accused, we will soon find that there is no shelter left for any of us.

As authoritarianism rises and war returns to our continent, the Council’s role has never been more vital. Its expulsion of Russia was an act not of punishment, but of principle—a reminder that tyranny cannot co-exist with liberty. What becomes of Britain’s claim to moral leadership if we abandon the very human rights system we helped to build? What becomes of the rule of law, at home and abroad, if the United Kingdom decides that it no longer needs to be bound by it? Our rights—our particular British rights—have been formed over a millennium of conflict, struggle and reform. We surrender them at our peril.