Council of Europe (UK Chairmanship)

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I am sure that my hon. Friend’s suggestions, and indeed proposals from the Parliamentary Assembly as a body, will be considered seriously in the course of the debates and conversations that we will have during the six months of our chairmanship and beyond.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Has not the whole process become ludicrously abused? Has my right hon. Friend had a chance to read the diaries of Phil Woolas, the former Immigration Minister, which reveal that his job was made absolutely impossible? For instance, he had to release to Osama bin Laden’s son the file on him, even though he was not living here. The whole process has become abused. What plans has my right hon. Friend to repatriate powers on human rights to this country so that we can have a proper and sound immigration policy?

[Mr Lidington]

I have to tell my hon. Friend, who is a distinguished member of the United Kingdom delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly and plays an active part in its proceedings, that reading Mr. Woolas’s diaries is a delight that is still in store for me. I fear that he is trying to tempt me on to the question of how the human rights incorporated in the convention are implemented in the United Kingdom. As the House knows, the Government have established an independent commission on human rights, chaired by Leigh Lewis, which is deliberating on these matters and considering the different ideas that have been proposed. It will report by the end of 2012.

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[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

This is an important and timely debate, and it is absolutely right that we have an opportunity to discuss in the House the UK’s forthcoming chairmanship of the Council of Europe. However, it is a shame that the most pro-European member of the Cabinet is not here to open the debate as was planned until late this morning.

There are now 47 members of the Council, and the period of chairmanship is six months, so this opportunity does not come around often. According to my rudimentary mathematics, the next time the UK will be in the chair will around 2035. The last time the UK was in the chair was in the early 1990s when the Conservative party was falling out about another European institution—the European Union. I sense a bit of déjà vu, and I trust that this afternoon’s debate will be less heated and divided than the debate earlier this week.

Our membership of the Council of Europe has been supported by successive Governments of different political colours and persuasions for the last six decades. It is worth reflecting on the history of the institution, which was shaped by the aftermath of the second world war and the defeat of fascism, and later by the collapse of communism. When Winston Churchill made his speech at the 1949 gathering in Strasbourg, he talked of an

“ancient city still scarred by the wounds of war”.

The horror of that global conflict, and the destruction and loss of life throughout Europe, led to the growing realisation that avoiding future wars had to be a priority.

That realisation brought together some of the leading statesmen of post-war Europe, with much of the earliest thinking coming from Winston Churchill. Other Conservative politicians played a role, particularly former Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe, who was instrumental in drawing up the European convention on human rights, which Clement Attlee’s Labour Government ratified in 1950. A cross-party consensus held then and over the following decades, and I hope that it will do so today.

[Mr Leigh]

We all accept that, but the fact is that the process has gone way beyond what was envisaged by people such as Winston Churchill.

The hon. Lady presumably wants to protect vulnerable women. Going back again to the diaries of theformer immigration Minister, he wrote that his proposal to increase the marriage age from 18 to 21 for a family visa would be overturned by judicial review because of the judges constantly referring to the convention on human rights. It is anti-human rights now, and we must reform it fundamentally.

[Emma Reynolds]

I agree that the Court needs to be reformed, and I will come to that, but I do not agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman said. Like the Minister for Europe, I have not had a chance to read my former colleague’s memoirs.

The Council today is very different from when it was first established, and Europe has changed beyond recognition. The rush of countries to join the Council of Europe in the years following the fall of communism extended its membership and reach significantly. Today, the Council of Europe has 47 member countries, covering 800 million people, and a vast land mass stretching from Reykjavik to Vladivostok—that is a tongue twister. It has led the way in protecting and promoting the rule of law, human rights and democracy in Europe. Many hon. Members, past and present, have taken part in the Council of Europe’s election monitoring to ensure that democracy is upheld in every member state, and I commend them for that. I want to join the Europe Minister in commending the work of the UK delegation to the Council of Europe.

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[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

As the Minister for Europe said in his opening remarks, this is an interesting week in the House of Commons when we have two debates on Europe. If I may say so, it is good that we are debating Europe, and not necessarily the European Union, today, although I will touch on the relationship between the Council of Europe and the European Union.

As we have already heard, the Council of Europe dates back to 1949 and is very much dedicated to democracy, human rights and the rule of law. We can be proud to have been one of its founding fathers. It now runs to 47 member states across the continent of Europe. The only states that are not members are Belarus, Kosovo and Vatican City—which I understand is not yet a democracy.

[Mr Leigh]

Nor should it ever be. [Laughter.]

[Mr Walter]

As the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) pointed out, the fact that there are 47 member states means that it will be 23 years before we get the chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers again. It is therefore very important that we make good use of our six months in the chairmanship that starts in a week or so.

This House, as has been pointed out, is represented in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Eighteen Members from both Houses of Parliament serve as full members of the Parliamentary Assembly and a further 18 stand ready as substitutes.

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[Mr Walter]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, which brings me neatly to the next one that I wanted to make.

I welcome the work of the commission on a Bill of Rights under the chairmanship of Sir Leigh Lewis. It was set up to advise on a British Bill of Rights, but at the request of the Prime Minister the first document that it published was advice to the Government on the reform of the European Court of Human Rights. It has expressed a view on that question, and I shall come to that in a moment. I also welcome the interest taken by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I know has been to Strasbourg and met the Court and is considering that very important issue.

I wish to deal with four issues related to the reform of the Court. The first, to which a number of Members have alluded, is the quality of the judges. Under the existing procedure, each member state puts forward three nominees when there is a vacancy for a judge of that nationality. Under the new procedures, those candidates are to be interviewed by the Committee of Ministers and by a sub-committee of the Parliamentary Assembly set up specifically for the purpose of making recommendations on which of the three judges is probably the best candidate. It then comes down to the Parliamentary Assembly to vote on those judges.

There has been phenomenal criticism in the Parliamentary Assembly that the judges nominated are not up to the quality that one expects in such an important court, which deals with human rights across the continent. Some of the judges are academics, and some are only what I would call administrative lawyers, but I believe that judges should have experience of sitting as court judges, preferably in the supreme court of their member state. They should not be people who have applied because they have been teaching a nice academic course specialising in human rights at a university for the past few years and thought, “Why not go to Strasbourg for a few years?” That is not the right way to select candidates.

The Parliamentary Assembly is considering another matter of some concern. If one of those judges drops out and is unable to perform his or her duties, the member state in question can nominate ad hoc judges to sit in their place in the Court. In the past four years, 77 ad hoc judges appointed to sit in for judges who were unable to be in Strasbourg were involved in 516 judgments. I am not sure, and there is some doubt, whether those ad hoc judges are of the same quality, because they do not go through the same selection procedure. They are not nominated, they are not interviewed either by the committee of Ministers or by the sub-committee of the Parliamentary Assembly, and they are certainly not voted for by the Parliamentary Assembly. I am not sure that the spirit of the convention is being implemented if we allow those 77 ad hoc judges to sit in judgment.

The second and most important point raised by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe was on subsidiarity and the filtering of cases, causing the backlog. Is the ECHR the final court of appeal for the 800 million people who live on the continent of Europe? I contend that it is not. I believe that it exists to act in partnership with our national supreme courts and that it should not be used as the final court of appeal. A number of members of the delegation met the secretary-general of the Council of Europe on Tuesday to discuss that. He said that—this is even worse—the majority of the cases before the Court involve people using it not as their final court of appeal, but their court of first instance. In the majority of cases, people are disgruntled by something that has happened in their locality—a remote part of Russia or wherever—and they do not use the Russian legal system first and foremost, but go straight to Strasbourg. We must stop that from happening.

People who appeal to the Supreme Court in this country, or even to the Court of Appeal on their way up to the Supreme Court, must seek leave to do so. We must create a situation like that. Requiring people to seek leave to appeal would mean that a judge in this country or another member state would determine whether such a case is admissible, or whether it should be heard by a national supreme court and whether that should be the end of the road.

[Mr Leigh]

The European Court often gets blamed unfairly for judicial activism, but the real judicial activism is happening in our own courts, because the convention is incorporated in our law. That was the big mistake, and I am constantly referring to it, which is why I intervened earlier. In a sense, the focus of the debate is wrong. We cannot focus only on the Court in Strasbourg; we must also focus on our own courts.

[Mr Walter]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why the Government were right to set up the commission on a Bill of Rights, which will consider whether the Human Rights Act 1998 should be replaced by a British Bill of Rights that better reflects the sentiments he expresses.

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[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

This has been quite a consensual debate. It has not been as noisy and pacey as the debate about Europe that we had on Monday, but there has been a great deal of quality and quite a lot of unity, not only on the importance of the Council of Europe, but on the need to reform some of its institutions, such as the European Court. I welcome the Minister’s remarks and those of the Labour representative, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), although I think she might have made a slight slip of the tongue when she suggested that the landmass covered by the Council of Europe stretched from Vladivostok to Reykjavik. The term “landmass” might come as something of a surprise to the Icelanders.

I pay tribute to all the members of the British delegation. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) will be sorry that he is unable to contribute to today’s debate as he is feeling rather unwell. He is a committed member of the delegation, and I am sure that hon. Members will regret not hearing one of his robust contributions. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter). He burnished his European credentials earlier this week, but he has received so many accolades today as the leader of the British delegation that that fact is worth mentioning too.

It is an enormous honour for Britain to take on the chairmanship of the Council of Europe. As the Minister highlighted, Britain was involved right at the beginning in establishing the institution, which was forged from the embers of wartime Europe and has promoted human rights, freedom and democracy, the rule of law and cultural co-operation ever since. It is sad that we are now so complacent that in some circles the phrase “human rights” has become something of a dirty word. Indeed, on occasion even the rule of law and the right of judges to interpret human rights have been questioned.

The Council of Europe shows that this is an important area that needs to be defended. Obviously the Council of Europe has a much lighter touch than the European Union and its institutions, but that gives it a much wider and more comprehensive remit. It has not just touched on human rights: we also have conventions on cybercrime, pharmaceuticals, the prevention of terrorism and the prevention of torture, and—as the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) pointed out—on trafficking human beings and on racism and intolerance, including intolerance based on religious belief or non-belief.

The complacent and sometimes rather lazy criticism of human rights and institutions at the European level can easily drift into a reversal of the progress that we have seen in all these enormously important areas. The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale), who is no longer in his place, pointed out how important it is not just to accept that the conventions exist and that a piece of paper has been signed, but to ensure that cases are considered in detail and measures are enforced in member states. However, that does not mean that there is no need for reform. The Liberal Democrats welcome the Government’s initiative to look into reforming Council of Europe institutions. The European convention on human rights is something that we should stoutly defend. We were the first state to ratify it, and we should certainly welcome the European Union’s accession to it and the application of those disciplines to its institutions.

[Mr Leigh]

During the lifetime of this Government, will the Liberal part of the coalition veto any attempt to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998?

[Martin Horwood]

I do not think that there is any suggestion that we will repeal the Human Rights Act, which actually allows this country to exercise its sovereignty by bringing the European convention on human rights into British law and giving British judges the right to enforce it. That is a re-enforcement of British sovereignty, so I would be surprised if any such suggestion were made.

However, the European Court of Human Rights clearly has a lot of problems. Mention has been made of the 155,000-case backlog. Obviously it is right that the British chairmanship should work to ensure that the Court’s judgments are implemented across the rest of Europe as well as they are in the UK, that its membership is of sufficiently high quality and, most importantly, that it does not act as a substitute for domestic courts.

One good initiative by the coalition has been the establishment of the commission on a Bill of Rights, which has already made interim recommendations on reforming the Court. The commission said in July:

“It is essential for the Court to be able to address cases involving serious questions affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention, and serious issues of general importance, where the Court’s intervention is justified. The Court should be a court of last resort, and not a first port of call for all human rights issues. It should be adjudicating hundreds of cases a year, not thousands, and certainly not tens of thousands, and ensuring that the principle of subsidiarity is observed by national institutions with the primary responsibility for the protection of human rights”.

The British chairmanship should build on that report, and seize the opportunity to take forward reform of the Court. I also hope, however, that the UK chairmanship will not be entirely distracted by the mechanics of human rights, and that it will champion those rights where they need to be championed.

In that respect, the UK chairmanship can build on the excellent work of the Foreign Secretary in his extensive report on human rights and democracy produced last year. It contains a list of countries causing concern to the British Government because of their human rights record. That list includes several European countries and one member state of the Council of Europe. Outside the Council of Europe it highlights Belarus, which is currently barred from membership because of its human rights record. The Foreign Secretary’s report describes “successive waves of repression” in that country. The Deputy Prime Minister has referred to it as “Europe’s shameful secret”. The Liberal Democrats’ own youth organisation has highlighted the struggle of its Belarusian sister organisation, Civil Forum, stating that its members

“continue to protest against the regime despite the potential violence they often face. Their struggle for human rights and political freedom is an inspiration to the global Liberal Youth movement.”

Sadly, I am sure that similar things could well be happening in such organisations in other political traditions as well. If the UK chairmanship can advance the cause of human rights in Belarus, that would be extremely welcome.

Russia also gets an unfavourable mention in the Foreign Secretary’s list. The report talks about

“restrictions on freedom of assembly, harassment and obstruction of NGOs and journalists”.

It also states:

“Human rights defenders in Russia remained at high risk in 2010.”

It highlights the cases of Oleg Orlov, of the human rights organisation Memorial, and of Sapiyat Magomedova, a human rights lawyer. It also mentions the trials of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, and talks about the circumstances surrounding the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, about which many questions remain unanswered. This is all very sad, because Russia has for centuries been a pillar of European culture and civilisation, and it needs to understand that showing respect for freedom, democracy and the rule of law is absolutely essential if it is to become a full member of the European family of nations.

As well as mentioning Belarus and Russia, the report also refers to examples even closer to the heart of Europe. Hungary’s new constitution gives cause for concern, and Amnesty International has highlighted issues in it relating to the rights of women, as well as to

“the provision allowing for life imprisonment without the possibility of parole…and the exclusion of sexual orientation from the protected grounds of discrimination”.

Hungary was in many ways at the starting point of Europe’s democratic revolution in 1989. It is a free democracy, and a full member of the Council of Europe and of the European Union, and it would be a great shame if it were to acquire a poor reputation in the area of human rights. I hope that under the UK chairmanship of the Council of Europe we shall see proactive debate and promotion of human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

I welcome the Minister’s remarks on the forthcoming London conference on cyberspace. It is important for it to tackle the threats from cybercrime and even co-ordinated cyber-attack. I also hope, however, that, in line with our role in the Council of Europe, it will emphasise the values of freedom on the internet and in cyberspace. Throughout the whole episode of the Arab spring so far, we have seen how important that freedom can be to championing democracy and human rights.

On the question of the budget, the Council of Europe is a relatively small institution in the great continental scheme of things, but it has had a staggeringly large impact for its size, and I believe that it provides very good value for money. The United Kingdom should pursue an active and successful chairmanship of the Council, as that would be in our national interest, as well as in the interest of our citizens and citizens across the whole continent of Europe.

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[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) is my next-door neighbour across the Trent, so I hope that there will be a sort of symmetry to our speeches; I will balance his speech for the purposes of the Gainsborough Standard. He is, of course, an ornament of Parliament, not least because he succeeds in irritating his own side as much as us, which is very good.

You, too, are an ornament of Parliament, Mr Deputy Speaker. You are also a former member of the Council of Europe. We all recall you often flying the flag for Britain on a Friday when everybody else had gone home. We are very grateful for all the work you did in the delegation. I am not sure that anyone has yet thanked you, so I wanted to put that on the record. In the Council of Europe we are restricted to three-minute contributions. I cannot promise that I will take as little as that, but I shall try to be as quick as possible because I know that others want to speak.

I am very proud to be a member of the Council of Europe. When we go there we see some marvellous history laid out in the foyer, with pictures of Winston Churchill speaking to one of the first sessions, if not the first. There is something very noble about this concept which, as we know, arose out of the second world war. The Council of Europe was a tremendously powerful mechanism in saying that we were never again going to have the horrors of Nazism and fascism. We should also be very proud of what the immediate past generation of members of the Council of Europe achieved in the whole transition to democracy in eastern Europe, of what the Council of Europe has achieved in eastern Europe and of how we are really defending human rights in eastern Europe, where there have been the most appalling and profound abuses, as there were in western Europe before 1945. To me, that is what the Council of Europe, the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act 1998 are all about; it is about the fundamental freedoms that, from Magna Carta onwards, we have built up in this country. We have become a beacon of those freedoms. We all know what they are: freedom of expression and of religion, the right to privacy and a family life—wonderful, basic freedoms. That is what I believe Winston Churchill was talking about, but what we have now seen is judicial creep way beyond anything ever envisaged when the convention was agreed.

There is a misunderstanding about this issue. Nobody on the Government Benches is suggesting that we should leave the convention. I am proud of the convention that we signed in 1949. All we are attacking is the incorporation of the convention into our law under the Human Rights Act 1998, which was passed by the Labour Government. That is our gripe. Nobody is denying that we should be a member of the Council of Europe or that we want to reform it, but this has become a very serious issue. If one looks on the front pages of the newspapers today one will see, just to take one issue, that the population of this country is due to rise within 20 years to 70 million people—a figure that the Labour Government said was quite unacceptable and would never be reached. Two thirds of that increase comes from immigration—that will put a severe strain not only on services but on good relations and human rights. This issue of immigration is therefore important.

If the Minister for Immigration were here and were allowed to speak openly about what is happening in his Department, I am sure that he would have to admit that he is severely constrained in what he can do to deal with this problem of immigration in order to foster good race relations because of the incorporation of the convention into our law. Although he cannot tell us, because he is a Minister, what is going on inside his Department, we have, as I mentioned earlier in a couple of interventions, now heard from a former Minister for Immigration. His diary really is worth revealing because it tells us in great detail what is going on. This is not some right-winger speaking: it is a former Labour Minister—a person who voted for the 1998 Act, was then put in a position of responsibility and was, frankly, driven mad by it.

[Martin Horwood]

I am tempted to discuss the issue of immigration and suggest that it is more to do with providing the skills in the right jobs, as that is what is drawing in immigration—that is something that the coalition is tackling.

The hon. Gentleman talks about getting rid of the Human Rights Act, which effectively means taking the ability to interpret the convention out of the hands of British judges and giving it back to European judges. Does he not trust British judges or does he think that by doing that we will somehow not be implementing it as fully as we would be if it were in British law?

[Mr Leigh]

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 the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (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.

[Bob Stewart]

The Human Rights Act also has a direct impact on operations for our armed forces, and often constrains the way in which our commanders can operate. They spend a heck of a lot of their time working out how not to offend the Human Rights Act rather than working out how they can carry out their operations. It is a very big difficulty, which we must also overcome.

[Mr Leigh]

I am grateful for that; my hon. Friend speaks with personal knowledge.

I shall end in a minute. I think I have made my point and I hope I have made it in a way that the House understands. Yes, I do believe that the Council of Europe needs some reform; the Court certainly needs some reform. There are obvious things that we could do to fillet the number of cases. A backlog of 160,000 is ridiculous and unsustainable. The Court should deal with fundamental abuses of human rights, which are still going on in some countries; let us be fair about that.

We have had recent debates in the Council of Europe about massacres and persecution of Christians in the middle east. Those are things of the sort that I think the founding fathers were thinking of—the horrible events, the disgusting and vile abuses of human rights that have been taking place in Libya within the past year, or in Syria in the past few weeks, or in Iraq over the past 10 years, and if those countries were part of the convention in the Council, that may be a good thing. That is what we should be focusing on, not these absurd, trivial cases—tens of thousands of them.

I cannot believe that a filleting process cannot be developed. I cannot believe that we cannot have a process similar to that which our own ombudsman uses. We are constantly being approached with requests to go to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, and there is a very quick process which fillets out immediately all cases that are obviously not applicable to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. Then the Court really could be something powerful, noble and great, which would be a beacon to the world. It really would defend human rights, because it would focus its attention on those very real abuses, which, I am afraid, are still taking place in the rest of the world and even, I suspect, in some parts of Europe in limited circumstances.

Having done that, I believe that we should repeal the 1998 Act and replace it with our own Bill of Rights. That Bill of Rights should be based on a fundamentally British understanding of how our common law has developed since the Magna Carta. It should protect people’s individual freedoms, but not take the whole process to a ridiculous conclusion, the sort that states that I cannot say what I believe or speak my truth if it might somehow insult the sensibilities of, for example, an hon. Friend. For instance, there was an absurd case concerning an argument about Islam that took place over the breakfast table in a bed and breakfast. The owner made a disparaging comment about Islam, suggesting that it was a violent religion—not a comment I would have made—but it was said in the course of a normal conversation. He was promptly taken to court for somehow infringing the human rights of the person with whom he was arguing. We all know that this is profoundly un-British and that it is not working. It is preventing British Ministers carrying out what a British Parliament wants. I believe that we should replace the 1998 Act with a British Bill of Rights.

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[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who is leaving his place, for reminding me that I need a haircut this weekend.

I am a member of the Council of Europe—and a proud member, actually. I am rather surprised by how much I am enjoying it, but you will understand the reasons, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I welcome many of the Minister’s remarks. I was especially pleased to hear his comments about a Bill of Rights and about subsidiarity. The Government seem to have a real programme to implement over the six months of our chairmanship, and most of us in this House would welcome that. However, we shall be scrutinising his work and keeping an eye on him. That is the job of this place, and I know that he will welcome it.

[Mr Leigh]

No, he won’t.

[Mr Binley]

I am sure he will.

The European Court of Human Rights has a proud history of defending the rights of individuals, but there is no doubt that there have been several questionable judgments that raise issues about its competence across the piece. I refer to the membership of the judges’ bench. It has already been said that a number of judges have little judicial experience, and indeed that some of them were political appointees. That does no good for the whole concept of jurisprudence. We ought to be making an effort to ensure that a court of this importance is matched by the quality of the judges who sit on its benches, and the sooner we get down to that, the better it will be. One judge was reported not to understand the concept of legal precedents. When one gets that sort of ignorance in a court of this kind, one begins to wonder what sort of justice it imparts. Indeed, many people in this country have begun to believe that some of its judgments are, to say the least, beyond the pale. Those people are responsible for overturning the decisions of this House and our courts, so we have a right to expect a greater degree of competence and better qualifications. I know that the Minister will take those thoughts on board.

My next point is about languages—a subject touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald). The 2005 Woolf report made 26 recommendations on the working methods of the European Court of Human Rights. One was the provision of language training, and yet that has not been implemented. We all know that interpreters can change the nuance of language dramatically when they interpret one language into another. Because the nuance changes, the meaning can be totally different. That is simply unfair to the people who put their trust and faith in the European Court of Human Rights. I urge the Minister to put language training for judges on his little list as an absolute priority.

The 2010 Interlaken conference and declaration stressed the need to preserve the high quality of the European Court of Human Rights. I have already referred to the lack of quality. This matter is consistently asked about, and it is consistently recorded that we need to do things. No wonder the people of this country get a little impatient when nothing happens. I want to send the European Court of Human Rights the message that it must get its act together, because it is undermining the confidence of the people of this country—and, no doubt, that of the people in other countries—which is so necessary for it in doing its work.

I was going to talk about prisoner voting, but we had a big debate on that recently. Suffice it to say that I believe that prisoners are in prison by choice. They are not forced to break the law; they choose to break the law. Therefore, there is no problem with the removal of that human right. They choose to deny themselves that human right. We ought to do some plain talking when this matter comes before the Committee of Ministers.

I also question the judges’ appreciation of our values and legal procedures. This nation is lucky to have a common law based on almost 1,000 years of life experience—a common law that has served this nation well. To my mind, it covered all the necessary protections of the people of this country. Indeed, they seem to think that it covered the necessary protections themselves. The fact that there are so many different codes of law in a 47 nation-strong Europe underlines the need for greater knowledge of the various codes of law in those countries. If necessary, that might require a division of the judges’ bench. We certainly need them to understand our code of law if they are making judgments about our citizens.

National Referendum on the European Union

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

About halfway through this evening’s debate, it might be helpful to remind the House that the motion states:

“That this House calls upon the Government to introduce a Bill in the next session of Parliament to provide for the holding of a national referendum”.

Do hon. Members remember national referendums? All three parties promised one in their 2005 election manifestos, and each came up with its unique way of reneging. The motion states that the referendum should be

“on whether the United Kingdom should

(a) remain a member of the European Union on the current terms;

(b) leave the European Union; or

(c) re-negotiate the terms of its membership in order to create a new relationship based on trade and co-operation.”

I must confess that when I first read that, I thought it would be extraordinarily difficult for anyone to disagree with a single word of it, whether they were for or against the EU.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

On the subject of reneging on promises, is not the crux of the matter this: if we live in a democracy, the people should have a voice?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I entirely accept that point, but I believe that the British people have become wiser about this matter since 1975. At that time, every single organ of the media was in favour of a yes vote; a no vote had no support in the media at all.

[Mr Leigh]

Surely the point is also that, in 1975, the hon. Gentleman had a vote, I had a vote and my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), who is sitting next to me, had a vote. I do not know whether Mrs Bone had a vote—

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

She was too young.

[Mr Leigh]

Indeed, and Mrs Leigh certainly did not have a vote, along with 84% of the present population. Do they not have a right to vote?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I was the agent for the no vote in Bedfordshire in 1975, so I have a track record.

Is our political class frightened that, if the British people voted to leave the European Union, we would no longer be a member of the common fisheries policy? Are they frightened that we might regain control of our fishing waters, stop the fishing free-for-all and see our fish stocks recover? Is it frightened that we would no longer have to subscribe to the common agricultural policy, and that we could instead choose to subsidise our farming, as and when, and where, we considered it appropriate and necessary? Is it frightened that we would no longer have to contribute to the European Union budget, at a cost of many billions a year, and rising? I cannot for the life of me see why such developments are so frightening.

There is also the old chestnut about Britain’s economic dependence on the EU, and the number of jobs that people say could be lost. We have heard a great deal about that tonight. The reality is that we have a massive trade deficit with the EU. In 2010, we bought £53.5 billion more from the rest of the EU than they bought from us. It is laughable that the EU could start a trade war with the UK, when it needs us so much more than we need it.

Middle East and North Africa

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

It is often necessary to use the word “allegation” and I have used it in respect of certain cases in Syria, which are as disturbing as some of the cases the right hon. Gentleman mentions in Bahrain. He has been a journalist in his time, so he will know that, based on what we read in newspapers, we sometimes have to refer to “allegations” rather than “established facts”. Of course, these things are a huge cause for concern. It is important, however, to maintain our own contact with, and pressure on, those in Bahrain who are looking for a successful dialogue. One of those is the Crown Prince of Bahrain. It is important to maintain contact both with him and with those on the Shia side in Bahrain. Simply not to talk to anybody in Bahrain because terrible things have happened would not be the correctly constructive position of this country.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Will the Foreign Secretary say a bit more about post-war planning? As we saw in Iraq, getting rid of a bloody tyrant in the middle east is a lot easier than ensuring stability afterwards. Let me press him more particularly on these talks with Italian experts. What exactly does that mean? Benghazi and Tripoli were divided for centuries before the Italians imposed unity. What evidence is there that Tripoli will co-operate with the national transitional council after the fall of Gaddafi, if he does fall?

[Mr Hague]

Of course these are valid questions from my hon. Friend. We do not know what the exact circumstances will be whenever it is that Colonel Gaddafi departs the scene. We do know that the national transitional council is preparing for that and we have advised it to prepare more intensively. Already included in the national transitional council are members representing the Tripoli area—in fact, I met those members on Saturday—so it already has representation from all parts of Libya. Its stated goal is to include current members of the current regime—what one might call the more technocratic members of it—in an interim Government. The plans are there; they need fleshing out in more detail, but they are more grounded in sensible reality than was the case immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Treatment of Christians

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[David Simpson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He is 100% right; I shall deal with the matter later in my speech.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Pakistan. I know the Government have said that their influence is limited—we condemn all this but we are limited in what we can do—but we are extraordinarily influential. We were very influential in Iraq: we invaded it, and the plight of Christians has become much worse since. We are extremely influential in Pakistan, where we are a major donor. The Government therefore have a lot of clout, particularly with regard to the blasphemy laws, to ensure that Christians are treated fairly.

[David Simpson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is absolutely right. Again, I shall deal with that later.

Although the Orthodox Church in Iran faces discrimination, Protestant Churches face severe persecution and are regarded as enemies of the state. Throughout 2010 and 2011, dozens of Protestant believers were prosecuted for no reason other than practising their faith. Protestant groups in Iran are often formed of converts, who actively seek to make more converts. That has brought down upon them a particular form of state opposition; they are targeted and tried under political charges, and are treated as politically subversive.

Since the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime, more than half of Iraq’s Christian population has, as a result of violent suppression, been forced to flee their homes or else flee the country altogether. In 1991, the professing Christian population totalled some 850,000. By 2003, that had fallen to just over 500,000. Today it is reckoned to have fallen to fewer than 250,000 individuals. That should surprise no one, given that there have been beheadings and even crucifixions. In the old Soviet bloc countries—from Russia itself through to Belarus—violence, prosecution and imprisonment are common.

I now turn to restrictions on, or the denial of, civil and religious liberties for Christians. Again, we can see this in many parts of the world. I shall cite a few examples, for I know that others want to contribute to the debate. Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws are used deliberately to settle personal disputes or disputes over land, or to carry out personal vendettas. However, they are also used to ensnare Christians into expressing any kind of criticism of Mohammed or the Koran, and thus to enable the bringing of charges. In the middle east, religious liberty is limited. In places like Kuwait, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, evangelism is prohibited and conversion is not allowed. In Saudi Arabia, expatriate Christians are supposed to be allowed to worship privately, but many are still prosecuted for doing so.

On the wider question of the denial of religious freedom, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom identifies a number of countries of particular concern. They are Burma, China, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Vietnam and a number of others. It also lists what it calls watch list countries. These include Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Laos, Turkey, Venezuela and Russia.

We must also acknowledge the inherent dangers that accompany what has come to be called the Arab spring. Right across the countries affected, groups are emerging that seek to exploit recent developments in order to establish a purist society in which the plight of other religious groups will be made worse. Indeed, Members will doubtless have read reports this week of the concerns expressed by pro-democracy elements in Tunisia and Egypt—that if the G8 fails to give financial assistance to strengthen the democratic cause in those countries, it could sound the death knell for democratic hopes in the region, thereby strengthening repressive regimes and providing a boost for radical movements that would seek to legislate away whatever minimal freedoms remain.

Although the current situation for Christians in many middle east countries is difficult, it could become increasingly dangerous in the coming months and years. What I have outlined represents a record of blood, a trail of suffering and a denial of basic humanity to many tens of thousands of people. We, as a Parliament and a nation, should not be like the priest and the Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan and simply pass by on the other side. Many of these nations are important trading partners. Some are in receipt of aid. Still others are members of the Commonwealth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) on securing the debate and I congratulate those who have spoken, including the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). That was the second speech of his I have heard today, because like him I was torn between this and the debate on the eurozone. Even though that debate is about billions of pounds, this debate is actually more important, although it is in Westminster Hall and the other debate is in the main Chamber. Why? Because lives are at risk and people all over the world are dying.

It is a bit depressing for me, because I have taken part in so many of these debates over the past 28 years and have written scores of letters to Ministers. I claim no credit for that because I, like other hon. Members, have been supported by campaign groups, particularly the Jubilee Campaign. I pay tribute to Mr Wilfred Wong, who for 20 years has helped MPs to raise the plight of persecuted Christians in numerous letters to the Foreign Office, but it is, frankly, a bit of a depressing exercise.

I do not blame the Minister—he has his brief, which he must read out—but so often the answer is much the same. Of course, there are soothing words and of course the Government condemn brutality in any shape or form and believe in freedom of expression and freedom of religion. However, over the years, as the problem has got so much worse, I am not convinced, frankly, that the Government have spoken up enough—I am sorry to have to say that to the Minister. We have real influence in the world. I was very moved by what my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) said as a Jewish person. There is no real comparison, I suppose, between what was happening in the 1930s and what is happening now, and if I am overstating my case, I apologise, but there was the famous case of some Foreign Office diplomat who, when evidence was coming out of Nazi Germany of the persecution of Jews, wrote in the margin of one of the papers, “Save us from wailing Jews.” That was an outrageous comment.

I know that the Foreign Office is not like that now; it is not quite the same. Sometimes, however, when one reads replies from our Foreign Office, one gets the impression that there is rather a light touch, and that it does not really want to get heavily involved. I noticed that recently, when speaking to a very senior diplomat who had served at the top level in Iraq and is now an ambassador in Europe. I mentioned the figures that my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow has cited, that the Iraqi Christian population has declined from 1.5 million to 800,000. He immediately said, “No, no, that’s not right. It hasn’t declined by that much. It’s declined from 1.5 million to 1 million, or something.” In other words, he was not fully engaged, and I did not get the impression that that had been a priority for him as a top diplomat in Iraq.

I know that the situation in Iraq was appalling; I have been there. I went to northern Iraq and wandered around the Christian villages, something so few of our top people who instituted the invasion have done. I went twice; the first time was to Kurdistan during Saddam Hussein’s time. That was a brutal, horrible regime, and I make no apology for it, but at least the Christians had some degree of safety; they were protected. I also went after the end of the regime, and had to listen to harrowing stories. Women, with tears streaming down their faces, sat in a room and recounted how their son and their husband, a church warden in the suburbs of Baghdad, had left home one day to go to church and had been killed in a brutal, senseless, sectarian attack, just because of their religion. What was even more horrific, and absolutely traumatising to listen to, was that some mothers’ children had simply disappeared. Can Members imagine that—a child, an 18-year-old daughter, going off to church and never being seen again? That is why I am passionate about the issue, and I make no apology for being so. We should be doing so much more, and our Government should be speaking much more forcefully.

Pakistan has been mentioned. It is our largest recipient of aid. It is a nuclear state and has an elite that massively evades paying taxes. The Pakistani military establishment was probably complicit in harbouring Osama bin Laden, a terrorist who was targeting our people. We are now giving hundreds of millions of pounds to Pakistan’s education service. The country has an appalling human rights record, and a dreadful system of blasphemy laws. I just wonder, in all the hours of discussion that will go on between President Obama and our Prime Minister during the two-day visit, in all the hours that will be spent talking about Iraq and Libya, how many minutes will be devoted to the brutal persecution of Christians around the world. None at all, I suspect. Through their aid programmes and their moral force, these people—our Prime Minister, the President of France, the President of the United States of America—have enormous influence.

I believe that there should have been zero tolerance of the persecution of the Jewish people before the second world war, and that now, in the 21st century, there should be zero tolerance of the persecution of anyone. It is not just outright persecution that we are talking about, not just the appalling genocidal attacks that have taken place in Iraq and Nigeria. Nigeria is—as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) has pointed out—a Commonwealth country and a large recipient of aid, both now and in the past. It is not just these horrific physical attacks; in so many countries there is the absurd situation of a kind of quiet persecution, and I am afraid that that applies to Egypt. I have been involved in numerous campaigns to support the Copts. No one can go out—has ever been able to go out—in Egypt and build a new church. There are all sorts of planning restrictions. The Copts are at the bottom of the economic heap and it is very difficult for them to rise up from there. Mention has been made of Saudi Arabia, which is a so-called key ally, but that country is back where we were in the 18th century, when people were allowed to engage in a minority religion but only in private. Frankly, the situation in Saudi Arabia is scandalous.

In conclusion, I congratulate Members on what they have said today, and I urge the Minister, when he goes back to his Department, to really get a grip of his diplomats around the globe and to use our powerful voice to speak out for the oppressed of the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

Thank you, Mr Benton, for calling me to conclude this debate. It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) on securing this debate on an extremely important and regrettably topical subject. I thank the hon. Members for Banbury (Tony Baldry), for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for their speeches, the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) for a typically impassioned and powerful speech and the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), for a typically thorough and thoughtful contribution. The treatment of Christians worldwide and, more broadly, individuals’ freedom to worship or practise their own religion or belief without discrimination or persecution is an important topic and of increasing concern given the problems faced by religious minorities, including Christians, in many parts of the world in recent years.

I will start by setting out the Government’s policy in this area, for the avoidance of doubt. The Government strongly support the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief and the right to freedom of opinion and expression as set out in those key international human rights instruments the universal declaration of human rights, the international covenant on civil and political rights and the relevant 1981 United Nations declaration. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has made clear on many occasions, the effective promotion of human rights, including religious freedom, is at the heart and core of our foreign policy. All Foreign and Commonwealth Office embassies and high commissions have a responsibility, which is made clear to the heads of mission in every post, to monitor and raise human rights in their host countries. We continue to raise freedom of religion or belief with other Governments whenever necessary. I reassure the hon. Member for Upper Bann and other Members that we are aware of the difficulties faced by Christian minorities around the world, and particularly in middle eastern and western Asian countries. I will deal with those countries with the greatest attention.

The Opposition spokesman mentioned Egypt in particular. In Egypt, where tensions between Christians and Muslims eased initially during the revolution in February, a number of extremely alarming incidents have recently occurred. Violent clashes between Muslims and Coptic Christians in Cairo on 7 and 9 May left 15 people dead and more than 250 injured. Peaceful demonstrations about those events on 15 May were attacked by unidentified gunmen. The Foreign Secretary condemned the violence in a statement to Parliament on 16 May and called on both sides to resolve their differences peacefully. He welcomed the fact that many in Egypt were appalled by the violence. The EU High Representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Baroness Ashton, also issued a statement on behalf of the European Union on 7 May condemning the clashes.

The UK remains in close contact with the Egyptian Government on the issue and has made absolutely clear the importance that we place on religious tolerance. The Foreign Secretary was in Egypt on 1 and 2 May, raising our concerns about the dangers of extremism and sectarianism in Egypt directly with the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and the Prime Minister.

The Egyptian Government have shown their intention to punish those who incite sectarianism by announcing on 8 May plans for new laws to criminalise attempts to jeopardise the freedom of faith and attacks on places of worship. We will make sure that we are vigilant in seeking to hold them to account for those commitments.

In Iraq, we remain concerned about the treatment of Christian minorities, and were appalled by the attack on Our Lady of Salvation church in Baghdad on 31 October 2010, which killed more than 50 people, and the further attacks on 10 November 2010, which targeted mainly Christian areas across Baghdad. The United Kingdom remains in close contact with the Iraqi Government on this issue and is committed to doing all that it can to protect the rights and freedoms of all minorities in Iraq. On 10 November 2010, the Foreign Secretary met the visiting Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Zebari, and raised with him directly the issue of Iraqi Christians. Mr Zebari acknowledged that the protection of Christians was the Iraqi Government’s responsibility.

More recently, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who has responsibility for the middle east, visited Iraq from 22 to 25 November. He met a number of senior Christian figures and raised the plight of the Christian community with the Foreign Minister, the new Speaker of the Council of Representatives, and the President and the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan regional government.

Pakistan has, regrettably, featured prominently in this afternoon’s debate. I pay tribute to the only Christian Minister in Pakistan, who was assassinated recently, and join everyone who has expressed regret about that.

[Mr Leigh]

Are the Government prepared to threaten to cut aid unless there is real progress on the blasphemy laws?

[Mr Browne]

I share my hon. Friend’s despair about some of the abuses of individual freedom and the right to expression, including religious expression, and, specifically, freedom of Christian expression in Pakistan. The Government, however, need to tread carefully, because the reason why the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was separated from the Department for International Development in the late 1990s was to try to decouple considerations about the alleviation of poverty from the Government’s overall foreign policy goals. I appreciate that those two may overlap at times, but we need to be cautious about judging the suitability of a desperately needy person to receive aid based on their Government’s behaviour in relation to religious subjects.

Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for, unusually, paying me a compliment. There are important differences, of course, in the level of international support and concern about Syria. I spoke a moment ago about the importance of our legal and international authority. So far, the Arab League position on Libya has been different from its position on Syria. Our ability to pass a resolution at the United Nations Security Council is very different on Syria from what it is on Libya, so if we believe that it is important to operate with legal and international authority, we must recognise that we are in a different situation in respect of Syria than we are in respect of Libya. I will return to Syria in the course of my remarks.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that many of us are worried about what the Chief of the Defence Staff said at the weekend, because he seemed to be implying that in order to resolve a stalemate that we ourselves have created, we should constantly widen the envelope of what we attack? We want a firm assurance that we will attack only military targets that directly target civilians, and that our mission is humanitarian and designed to achieve a ceasefire and peace.

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend can certainly be assured that we will stay within the scope of the UN resolution, with legal advice, but he must bear it in mind that as the situation changes, what is targeted and the methods necessary to achieve our objectives will sometimes have to change. It would not be effective to say that we are only ever going to target the same things. Many different parts of the apparatus of the regime in Libya that are engaged in prosecuting a war against its own civilians have not actually been targeted yet.

European Union (UK Permanent Representative)

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

The hon. Gentlemen may speak if they have had the permission of the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell).

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) on securing this 30-minute debate. I come at the subject from a slightly different perspective because, in my former life, I was a Member of the European Parliament and spent 10 years working with some of the officials who performed in the role of the permanent representative.

I have a relatively close friendship with the current incumbent, Sir Kim Darroch, who is a brilliant diplomat. We should not underestimate the brilliance and intellect of some of the top mandarins who have pushed themselves forward and have gone into such roles. Nor should we underestimate their independence. We can, however, take something from the European institutions. When we appoint European Commissioners, they must go through a confirmation process in the European Parliament, to which they supposedly answer. The United States, too, has confirmation processes for all the top appointments.

My hon. Friend is not going as far as he should: when we have a change of Government, we need a change in the Administration at the same time. We need to bring in people who truly believe in what that newly elected Government will do, and we need to have proper appointment and confirmation processes for all our top officials. We should not be so timid as to look only at the head of the UK Permanent Representation to the EU, important as it is. We should expand our view to include most top appointments. I have been in trialogues and all sorts of exciting meetings in European institutions; I have seen British representation at its best and at its worst, and I have seen deals done behind the scenes and in front of people.

During the current passage of the European Union Bill through the House of Lords, I noticed a funny noise—the opening of the tombs of the Cross Benchers and all those who had served in our diplomatic service before they reached that place. I then noticed the amazing energy and dislike for the number of referendums placed into the proposed legislation—a distrust of the people and, indeed, of their elected Government—and the desperate attempts to change the legislation passed in this House.

Those people were exhibiting the problem identified by my hon. Friend. They do not like the subtle change going on, with the European Union Bill providing a lot of referendum locks on transfers of competence from Britain to Europe in many policy areas. They are the Hugo Young college of Europe-type persons: they have been through the process, might rely on a European pension and enjoy going out with fellow diplomats everywhere. I worry about the influence of our current top civil servants, so I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s ideas.

[Mr Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Another hon. Member wishes to speak and I intend to give the Minister at least 10 minutes to reply, which is only fair, so perhaps the hon. Gentleman will bring his remarks to a close shortly.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I had just done so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Reckless]

Would the Minister include in that description of UKRep’s various diplomatic successes negotiation of the euro bail-out funds around the weekend of 10 May last year?

[Mr Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. This debate is about the appointment process for the UK permanent representative. It is perfectly in order for hon. Members and the Minister to introduce the subject, but we must now return to the appointment process, which is the subject of the debate.

[Mr Bellingham]

Thank you, Mr Leigh. I will return to the subject of the debate, but if my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) writes to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe, I am sure that he will provide a detailed response, which I do not have time to do now.

Work continues with the development of a reformed and effective neighbourhood policy on the back of the Arab spring, which will continue to require skilful and proactive negotiation from UKRep. In the area of economic policy, the permanent representative and his team played a vital role in ensuring that the Prime Minister was able to secure positive and robust language in December for the next financial perspectives. They also developed a broad level of consensus for the Prime Minister’s joint letter on growth ahead of the spring European Council. Similarly, UKRep played a vital role in preparing the ground for a good set of European Council conclusions on the euro-plus pact.

My hon. Friend the Member for Clacton made various comments and assertions about particular officials and their roles in negotiations on EU issues. The topic for debate today is the appointment process, not the policies, as you rightly pointed out, Mr Leigh, so I will not dwell on the policy issues that my hon. Friend raised, and I will not comment on individual civil servants. However, what is clear to me is the importance of the distinction between the roles of Ministers and officials. Ministers take decisions on policies, and are accountable for them to Parliament. Officials in UKRep then negotiate within the mandates and instructions that Ministers have provided. Those mandates are adjusted and updated as the negotiations progress, but it is a myth that UKRep has the freedom to operate outside the negotiating mandates that they receive from Whitehall, or to make independent judgments about compromises or deals.

The House of Commons has the opportunity, through its excellent European Scrutiny Committee, which is under the proactive and assiduous chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), to set out its views on European documents ahead of agreement. The Committee has the right to ask for a debate in Standing Committee or on the Floor of the House. This Government value the work done by Parliament on EU work, as it is fundamental to making the Government of the day more accountable to EU decision-making, as well as to making the EU process more transparent.

My right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe made a statement along those lines to the House on 20 January, and encouraged the Government and Parliament to explore ways in which Parliament’s scrutiny role could be further strengthened on EU issues, including on justice and home affairs. That is the right way for Parliament to be satisfied that, through ministerial accountability, officials throughout Whitehall and posts—including the Permanent Representation—are promoting the national interest effectively in the EU.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

We are certainly having those conversations, and the hon. Gentleman is quite right to say that there are lessons to be learned from previous situations, including Iraq. The National Security Council is already working well on the matter, and of course my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development plays a very strong role on the subject. We are working with the UN already, and the UN is making good progress with stabilisation planning, but of course it is constrained in what it can physically do on the ground by the absence of peace and a political settlement in Libya. However, the planning is taking place and the UK is playing an important supporting role.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the best first step towards the reconstruction of the country would be peace and a ceasefire? Will he therefore assure the House that all his efforts are pointed in that direction rather than just at regime change?

[Mr Hague]

Our efforts are devoted to implementing UN resolution 1973, which begins by calling for a ceasefire and an end to violence. Of course, that means a genuine ceasefire in which the regime not only really does cease fire but pulls back its forces from the areas where it is attacking the civilian population. It is in the search for that ceasefire and the protection of the civilian population that we are doing what we are doing in Libya.

Africa and the Middle East

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

A great many diplomatic efforts have been made. The right hon. Gentleman mentions my own efforts. I met the President and the opposition parties two months ago to encourage them in the right direction—evidently without success in this case—and other Foreign Ministers from around the world have tried to do the same. In recent days, the Gulf Co-operation Council countries, in particular, have been involved in trying to mediate over Yemen, and Saudi Arabia has often tried to do so. Many efforts have been made. The list of envoys who have tried to assist in bringing people together in Yemen is growing quite long. That in no way excludes further efforts, so of course we will continue to do everything we can to try to ensure that reason prevails and that the way to an orderly transition is found in Yemen that does not involve an even greater scale of injury and loss of life, to which the right hon. Gentleman refers. We will continue these efforts and in no way dismiss the idea of a further international envoy.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

When Musa Kusa was ambassador here, we had to expel him for openly calling for the murder of dissidents. We are now supping, if not with the devil, with a pretty good substitute. Is not our enthusiasm for regime change sucking us away from the high moral ground of humanitarian gestures and into the ever more murky world of Libyan politics?

[Mr Hague]

No, I think that the high moral ground is retained by basing all our actions on what is legally correct, as we have done in our handling of the whole Libya crisis from the United Nations resolution downwards, and in the handling of these individual cases. When somebody with such a long association with the regime wants to leave it, and by doing so damage the regime, I think that it is right to assist them in doing so. Additionally, it can only be a good thing to discuss with such a man the situation in Libya and the middle east, and gain his insight into it. It can also only be a good thing that any prosecuting authorities that wish to speak to him and get more information from him can do so. I see no downside in doing what we have done with him over the past few days.

Libya (London Conference)

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

It is very important that not only in Libya, but in north Africa as a whole, the UK and the European Union take the bold and ambitious approach that I described earlier, in order to act as a magnet for positive change—for civil society, open political systems, the building up of small and medium-sized enterprises, and all the other building blocks of democracy—but we cannot guarantee the outcome, of course. That is why we must make sure Europe provides a very big and effective magnet for those changes. If we fail to do that, not just Libya but any of the other countries in the region could become breeding grounds for terrorism and extremism. I think we should be on the optimistic side of this situation in which millions of people are seeking greater freedom, openness and democracy, but we should also be alert to the dangers if they do not succeed in getting those things.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I strongly agree with the shadow Foreign Secretary and his measured words, and urge extreme caution on my right hon. Friend. Would it not be a double win for al-Qaeda, and would we not start losing support in the Arab world, if we were seen to impose a solution on Libya and at the same time give arms to people who could prove to be Islamist insurgents in the future?

[Mr Hague]

I can assure my hon. Friend that we will not be engaged in imposing any solution on Libya. We will carry out necessary operations to implement the UN Security Council resolutions, but we are not in the business of imposing a solution, or a Government, on Libya. Indeed, if we were, we would lose that wider Arab and regional support, of whose importance he rightly reminds us.

North Africa and the Middle East

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I think that the whole world is pretty much united on urging Gaddafi not only to stop the fighting, but to leave the scene. That is the view even of countries that did not support the UN Security Council resolution. This is a worldwide view. However, Colonel Gaddafi is clearly not easily persuaded to engage in a dialogue to reach out to the opposition. We hope he will see that the situation is such that it is necessary for him to go, and that is the only way forward for the Libyan people. The countries to which the hon. Gentleman refers are certainly of that opinion as well and certainly do not want the Gaddafi regime to continue.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

On that very point about the Gaddafi regime continuing, some of us were briefed this week by the BBC journalist who had been detained in horrendous circumstances in Tripoli. He is clearly no apologist for the regime, but he said that it was remarkable how quiet Tripoli was, with demonstrations confined to one suburb and engaging only 200 or 300 people. Clearly the people there are cowed and massive subsidies are being poured at them. As some of us have asked constantly, what will happen if Gaddafi simply beds down in Tripoli? What is the game plan? What are we trying to achieve? Will the Foreign Secretary confirm that we are only on a humanitarian operation to protect the people of Benghazi and no more?

[Mr Hague]

Almost, as it is not just the people of Benghazi we need to protect. Although UN resolution 1973 specifically mentions Benghazi, it also calls for the taking of all necessary measures to protect the civilian population and populated areas in other parts of Libya. That is our mission. Our military mission is defined as clearly as any military mission has ever been by a UN resolution, and we will stick to that resolution. Clearly it is highly desirable for Gaddafi to go, as we have said for many weeks, but in military terms what we have set out to do is enforce the resolution. That means protecting Libya’s civilian population, attempting to bring about a ceasefire and not putting any occupation force on to any part of Libyan soil. We will stick strictly to the resolution.