Council of Europe: House of Lords Members’ Contribution

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the Foreign Secretary has been dismissed and a new one has not yet been appointed, so I think that, at this moment in time, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, is the Foreign Minister of the country. He has supreme power. I hope that he uses it wisely in whatever statements he chooses to make at the end of the debate. Perhaps I may say also that I hope that he is not a member of the next Administration because I am told that, to become so, one has to give a pledge of willingness to contemplate no deal, and I am sure that the noble Lord, whom we respect deeply, would not do anything quite as misguided as that.

I begin with a confession. I have never served on a committee or delegation of the House; I have always taken GK Chesterton’s view:

“I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities—and found no statues of Committees”.


However, I pay tribute to those noble Lords who have taken on this work, which I think is important. The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, alone demonstrates that, because the work of the Council of Europe in monitoring elections and seeing that they are free and fair across Europe is at the bedrock of what it means to have a Europe of civilisation and democracy.

The issue which it is worth us addressing in this debate, and on which I would welcome the Minister’s views, is what benefits we get from the Council of Europe. I am all in favour of its existence, being of the view that the best leader that this country has had by far in the past century was Winston Churchill, who saved Europe and inspired a democratic and free Europe by his own example. Of course, one of the great ways in which he did so was through the foundation of the Council of Europe, and he was its first chairman in 1948. In preparing for this debate, I read his speeches as chairman and they are phenomenal. However, the question as to what we gain is a big one. In two respects, the Council of Europe’s record is ambivalent. The challenge for us—I do not think that anybody thinks that it should end—is how we improve on it.

The first respect in which the Council’s record is ambivalent is that it is clear that it has not played much part in reconciling Britain to Europe in any meaningful way. Given what is happening to the country, with us leaving the European Union and having a greater froideur in our relations with Europe than at any time since 1945, we cannot honestly say that the Council of Europe has played much part in making us, or even our political class, more European. I am afraid that I have not read the reports to which the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, referred; all I can say is that they impinge hardly at all on the public debate in this country. As I listened to noble Lords, I wondered whether I could think of any contribution which the Council of Europe has made recently to the public debate in this country, and I can think only of one—which I will come to in a moment.

In his great first speech as chairman of the Council of Europe, Churchill said:

“It is impossible to separate economics and defence from the general political structure. Mutual aid in the economic field and joint military defence must inevitably be accompanied step by step with a parallel policy of closer political unity”.


That is the prospectus for the European Union, and it is the European Union which Britain is in the act of seeking to leave. Churchill’s own legacy and own injunction to the Council of Europe is not being honoured in Britain’s relationship either with the Council or with the other European institutions. That side is clearly very depressing.

It is therefore clear that the Council of Europe has had almost no impact whatever in reconciling Britain to Europe; it has enabled some British politicians to play a role, such as that of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in election monitoring and so on, but it has not had a more fundamental impact. A further question is whether it has played a role in instilling wider human rights, respect for human rights and democratic rights in the wider Europe. That question hangs on whether Turkey and Russia, which are the two most problematic members of the Council of Europe in terms of their respect for human rights and democracy, have a better record and whether we are able to make a more constructive contribution to engaging them in democracy and human rights as members of the Council of Europe than would be the case if they were outside and we were therefore able to be more critical. Listening to this debate, I am not sure what the answer is, and I do not think that noble Lords are sure. We have heard some noble Lords who think that we should engage more closely with Russia and others who think we should not. I am not sure. All I can say is that things are pretty desperate in both cases. We have near-dictatorships in both Turkey and Russia; there is only a figleaf of respect for democracy and human rights in both countries. However, the cause has not yet been completely lost, so maybe one can argue that it is worth continuing with the dialogue as members.

The one undoubted benefit in both cases, it seems to me, is the abolition of the death penalty. My understanding is that it is not possible to be a member of the Council of Europe and have the death penalty. If Turkey and Russia were not members of the Council of Europe, given what has happened to their politics in the last 10 and 20 years, they probably would now have the death penalty. If it is our judgment that that has been an achievement, then all the work of noble Lords in attending these endless committees from 8 am until midnight will have been worth while.