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Human Rights

Yes, my Lords, I will make sure that we look at that. I am extremely grateful, because I have been racking my brains for the past hour trying to remember what was happening around this issue. The noble Lord has just reminded me what it was, so I thank him. I know that it has been raised elsewhere and I am grateful to him for raising it now. I am going over my time because I have been interrupted, so I think that I am allowed to; anyway, both Front-Benchers went over their time. I have nearly finished. The noble Lord, Lord Lester, talked about the backlog at the European Court of Human Rights. There is a meeting today in San Marino at which my officials are discussing that issue. I particularly wanted to pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, who has been very involved in trying to help the court to deal with the backlog. On 1 January the backlog stood at 89,000 cases. I understand that a number of cases have been removed from the list, if I can put it like that. The noble Lord has come up with some pragmatic approaches which we are pushing hard to make happen—for example, an application form. Some 12,000 letters were destroyed last year because they did not fit the criteria, and it will be 15,000 this year. An application form might help, as might making sure that when a decision is made it is communicated, so that countries will know what the effects will be; there is clearly a precedent for that. These are pragmatic and practical ways in which the group of wise persons who produced the report last November, of which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, is a member, has been able to try and deal with some of the questions. We are also hoping that the Russians will ratify Protocol 14, which they signed in May last year. That will enable the filtering to be done by one judge as opposed to several, which enables the court’s work to speed up dramatically. Finally, I will address the matter of the individual petitions to the UN; the noble Lord, Lord Lester, raised it. We are looking at that. As he has said, the optional protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women enables individual claims to go to the UN. One has been rejected and there is a second one. I am not going to get information about what has happened to that until the autumn, so reviewing whether that works or not is going to take me longer. I can say to the noble Lord that it is my responsibility and I will make sure that we deal with it. I am grateful to noble Lords for the fascinating debate; I could spend hours talking about all the issues raised, so perhaps we will have more debates that take some of those issues forward.