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Council of Europe (UK Chairmanship)

My hon. Friend is right: there has to be unanimity within the EU before accession can take place. Further, there must also be an important role for our Parliament. Under the European Union Act 2011, once agreement is reached on the detail of EU accession, the Government would be required to place that decision before each House of Parliament, and there would have to be a debate and a vote in this place and in the House of Lords before the UK could ratify EU accession to the COE. So not only the British Government but Parliament have to agree before that can happen. The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) asked, first, whether British Ministers would report to the Parliamentary Assembly during the six months of our chairmanship. The answer is yes. I have agreed to attend the session in Edinburgh in November and those in Strasbourg in February and April next year to report on the progress made under our chairmanship. The hon. Lady also asked for examples of cases in which the Court had substituted its judgment for that of national courts. An issue that came up in the Interlaken declaration on the removal of people from a country when their case had been properly considered by the national courts is key here, as all 47 countries agreed that the Court was looking in too much detail at matters that had been quite properly considered by national authorities. In recent judgments against not only us but Sweden, the Court has checked findings of fact made by national courts in cases about removing people from the country. For example, it has insisted on considering the applicant's credibility or family situation, but those are not matters that should be considered at the European level. My right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary went to Izmir, and the declaration adopted at that conference in April called for a stricter approach to interim measures under rule 39, which, as the hon. Lady knows, is often used to halt deportations, with the Court intervening only exceptionally if cases have been considered by fair and effective national procedures. I hope that the marker put down by all 47 countries at Izmir also gives some comfort to my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton South (Mr Binley) and for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and others who have expressed particular concern about the impact of Court judgments on immigration policy. My hon. Friends the Members for Northampton South and for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) asked about the appointment of judges and whether the Interlaken process would diminish the democratic element regarding the election of judges to the Strasbourg court. The key part of the process that requires reform is the national procedures by which each state selects the list of three candidates whom it proposes to the Parliamentary Assembly. If we get this right, concerns about the quality of judges should fall away. We have welcomed the establishment of a panel of the Council of Ministers to ensure that all states put forward three well-qualified candidates for those posts and it has already taken France to task on this very point. We are driving forward work on a recommendation that would lay down standards for national procedures in all 47 states, and I am pleased to report that according to the Parliamentary Assembly itself the United Kingdom is a beacon of good practice in this regard. My hon. Friends the Members for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and for Gainsborough asked about the recommendation by the Bill of Rights commission that the Strasbourg Court should consider only the most important cases. Our position as a Government on this is that the Court should focus on areas where the convention is not being properly applied or where there is a genuine need at the European level for authoritative guidance on its interpretation. Where member states are applying the convention effectively, the Court should intervene less. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough also raised a number of concerns about immigration. He will understand if I do not comment on individual cases, especially on the basis of Mr Woolas's memoirs. My hon. Friend said that his arguments were not so much about the principles embodied in the convention—indeed, he spoke up in favour of the convention—but about the means by which it is implemented and applied in this country. I take his comments in that spirit. I remind him again of the work of the independent commission and encourage him to make representations to Sir Leigh Lewis and his colleagues. I would also recommend, if he has not done so already, that he have a look at the very thought-provoking speech made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General at Lincoln's Inn on Monday, in which, among other things, he discussed the relationship of the United Kingdom Supreme Court to the European Court of Human Rights and indicated how his thinking was developing on that matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) made several criticisms—more, I think, of the implementation of the convention in this country than of the convention per se. I took her points seriously. When she and other hon. Friends make those criticisms, they are speaking on behalf of large numbers of constituents who have expressed concerns. But I would caution my hon. Friend and the House about one of the statistics that was deployed—the claim that the Court finds a violation in 87% of all cases and in 61% of cases against the United Kingdom. These proportions are only of the cases where there is a judgment. We must remember that 97% of cases against the UK are thrown out without even having their merits considered, because they are ruled inadmissible. If we look at the raw figures for 2010 and 2011 so far, the Court has decided 1,713 cases that were brought against the United Kingdom, but only 33 of those 1,713 were decided by a judgment; the rest were simply ruled inadmissible by the Court or struck out completely. Given that only 33 went to a judgment, it is not wholly surprising that a relatively high proportion of those 33 cases were decently arguable and led to the finding of a violation. My hon. Friend also spoke about how one set of rights was seen to be overruled by another set. I know that comes up frequently at public events. As the House knows, and members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe know all too well, the convention expresses a number of different human rights and it is a clear principle that where those rights conflict there is a duty on the countries that are party to the convention to balance those rights in a way that is just and proportionate in the circumstances of a particular case. There is a legitimate debate about where the right to take a final decision in any case should lie—with Strasbourg, with domestic courts, with legislatures or with the Executive in a particular country. Then there is a further argument about whether, in any individual circumstances, whichever authority it is has achieved the right balance in finding a judgment that is right, just and proportionate. We will never get away completely from that type of argument, any more than we do when we read reports of judgments in domestic civil and criminal cases. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) asked whether I would support Finnish and Spanish Ministers' work on local government reform. I can guarantee that the Government will work towards a more effective and efficient role for the Council of Europe in supporting local and regional democracy. We want to see the Council's work in this field streamlined and more carefully targeted. We are looking forward to Mr Chavez's report and we will ensure that its recommendations are given serious consideration. My hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale) raised constituency cases as illustrations of a general complaint that countries party to the convention allow people to be detained for far too long without charge or trial. He fights fiercely on behalf of his constituents whom he believes have been treated unjustly. He knows from discussions that he and I have had that the individuals concerned can make an application to Strasbourg regarding an alleged violation of articles 5 and 6 by their detention without trial. The problem is that the text of the convention does not define what a reasonable period of such detention is. I am sure that my hon. Friend will continue to campaign vigorously on this matter. My hon. Friend also asked about a convention on transfrontier broadcasting. My understanding is that the European Union has exclusive competence in this area, so there would be problems with an EU member state signing a Council of Europe convention on the matter. On that basis, the Committee of Ministers has agreed to discontinue work on that convention, pending further consultation. However, I will consider my hon. Friend's point further, consult colleagues in other Departments that are more directly responsible for broadcasting policy and then write to him on the matter. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and Falkirk—