David Cameron is not going to revisit the Lisbon Treaty or alter the UK’s relationship with the EU they are looking a new target – the European Convention of Human Rights and the two institutions set up after world war two, the Council of Europe, and the European Commission on Human Rights which evolved into today’s European Court of Human Rights.
Unlike the EU, the ECHR and the Council of Europe incorporate 47 member states who have signed the treaty and agree to abide by ECHR rulings. To be sure, the extent of compliance is problematic. Proposals to tear up the treaty setting up the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of Europe would harm the hopes of millions of people in young European states which need the ECHR to defend their rights.
As a UK delegate to the Council of Europe for the last five years I have no illusions about its faults and failings. But the council and the ECHR constitute one of the rare places in the world where governments can be held to account and as treaty signatories told to change the way they treat their citizens. The current backlog of cases is because scores of thousands of Russians have complained to the ECHR. If Britain were to quit the ECHR it would send a signal to the neo-authoritarians in post-Soviet so space that they can ignore international rule of law in the human rights field.
Winston Churchill took the lead in setting up the Council of Europe and it was British jurists who shaped the European Commission on Human Rights and the ECHR. From upholding the rights of British Cypriots when their property was stolen after the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus in 1974 to the insistence that prisoners cannot be brutally treated by police the ECHR has steadily advanced the cause of human rights in Europe. Of course its rulings irritate and upset politicians in many countries who refuse to accept any challenge to their settled ways. The current row over prisoners’ voting rights has been in the pipeline for some years. Labour ministers simply dodged dealing with the issue and passed the parcel to the new government. The row can be settled easily by adopting the French method of adding a loss of civic rights to sentences for serious crimes.
Of course the ECHR annoys people who think that every British judge and jury are perfect and never make mistakes. But justice and respect for law are stronger if citizens feel there is an appeal process. Compared to other major world regions – the Americas, Africa, or Asia – the citizens of Europe have in general terms a broader sense of living under rule of law with their human rights upheld. When the ECHR was written, capital punishment was the norm and homosexuality was a crime. Today we think differently and what the ECHR does is to reflect changes in social and penal thinking and spread new principles and practice more widely.
Britain’s treaty obligations mean full membership of the Council of Europe and full participation in the ECHR. It is quite wrong to claim that the UK can pick and choose which bits of the treaty it wants to abide by. Policy Exchange, which is unashamedly part of the Eurosceptic thinktank establishment, is peddling a false line that the UK can simply not abide by ECHR rulings but stay part of all the other treaty arrangements. This has nothing to do with the European Union. If the UK quit the Council of Europe it would shame Britain around the world. And it would still leave Britain open to the EU Charter of Human Rights and rulings by the European Court of Justice.