Istanbul Convention: Position of the UK Government Debate
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Philip Hollobone
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Istanbul Convention: Position of the UK Government
Philip Hollobone Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new hybrid arrangements. Members attending physically should clean their spaces before using them and before leaving the room. I also remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Westminster Hall.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Istanbul Convention and the position of the UK Government.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. There is an urgency to this debate, which I will come on to explain, but one of the primary concerns of the Council of Europe, representing 47 member countries and about 800 million citizens in those countries, is to safeguard and protect human rights. Violence, particularly violence against women, including domestic violence, undermines the core values on which the Council of Europe is based.
The urgency of this debate comes about for very good reasons, and just let me say that I initiate the debate, as the leader of the UK delegation to the Council of Europe, in order to highlight the problems that we have with regard to the Istanbul convention. Those reasons stem from the fact that the Turkish Government have decided to withdraw from that convention. People may think it very strange, as it is called the Istanbul convention, that the Turkish Government have decided to withdraw from it, but also the Polish Government appear to be giving indications that they wish to withdraw from it. I think that this is a very serious challenge to a particularly important treaty of the Council of Europe, which I will come on to in just a second.
The reason the UK becomes involved in this is that the Turkish delegation has been saying, “What do we care about this? Look at the UK. A founder member and grand payeur of the Council of Europe has signed the convention but not even ratified it. If they haven’t ratified it, what use is it and why are people getting on to us?” That is something that we should take a strong stand against, because, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister will come on to say, we have been doing a lot in order to ratify it.