Global Britain: Human Rights and Climate Change Debate
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John Howell
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Global Britain: Human Rights and Climate Change
John Howell Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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John Howell (Henley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. The title of the debate is of interest to me as the leader of the UK delegation to the Council of Europe. I will try to touch on the three elements of the debate: global Britain, human rights and climate change.
I stress that the global Britain aspect of the debate starts and continues with Europe. We may have left the European Union, but we have not left Europe. The Council of Europe is an organisation of some 47 member countries. It is almost twice the size of the EU and it does a tremendous amount of work. A good example of its work is the Istanbul convention, which looks after the rights of women and tries to prevent domestic violence. Although we have not yet ratified the convention, it is changing the law in this country to ensure that we can ratify it; we have signed it. The Council of Europe is an important organisation, of which we are a part, and I play a particularly prominent role in it, not only as the leader of the delegation but as a vice-president and, effectively, as a deputy speaker.
The question of human rights is allied to the Council of Europe. Both the Foreign Secretary and I are keen on human rights and the Council looks after the European Court of Human Rights. That is not an EU body. It is owned by the Council of Europe. The countries that have had the most cases brought against them there are Russia, Turkey and Romania, in that order. The UK does very well in terms of cases brought before the Court, and something like 92% or 93% of them are dismissed before they even get to a hearing before a judge. Our continued membership of the Council of Europe is an important aspect of the role that we play in human rights.
In climate change, the Council is also playing a good role. At the Council of Europe, I have supported John Prescott’s paper on the role of climate change in estuaries in a cross-party effort to take it forward and to deal with the elements of climate change across the board. On 29 September, there will be a whole-day session about climate change. Speakers include a Belgian, a Greek, a Turk, a Portuguese chap and a German chap. We have another person from Portugal, as well as people from Switzerland and France and, of course, myself.
That is an important measure for us to play a part in. After all, another member of that organisation is Russia. If we can keep the pressure on Russia to follow the climate change agenda that we have all set, we will have achieved a tremendous amount in global terms. I am confident that we can bring Russia to heel when it comes to fulfilling its obligations on climate change and that we will be able to take that forward and sit back in a few years’ time and look at it with great confidence.