I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) on securing this debate, and on his leadership of the UK delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
I follow on directly from the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who made the point in an intervention and has reiterated in his speech that people in this building do not understand the Council of Europe; he is absolutely right. Some months ago, I was in the Tea Room, explaining to colleagues that the Council of Europe covers lands stretching from Azerbaijan to the Atlantic, and from the Mediterranean to the Arctic circle. Even then, some people could not grasp the fact that it was not the European Union, but something much bigger and, I would argue, much more important. One of my colleagues present on that occasion—I will not name her, because I hate to embarrass the Home Secretary—said, “Why do we pay it so little attention?” I looked her straight in the eyes and said, “Because it’s got the word ‘Europe’ in it.” I am afraid that is a sad fact of life.
The Council of Europe has done, and continues to do, an enormous amount of work, particularly in relation to the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Following the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, we suspended the voting rights of the Russian delegation, who then walked out. The British delegation, which punches far and away above its weight in the Parliamentary Assembly, took a stand and resisted Russia’s readmission—with one dishonourable exception, who, I am ashamed to say, was a Member from the Government Benches. Every other Member of Parliament from every political party voted against Russia’s readmission in support of our colleagues in the Baltic states, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. However, others thought they knew better and let the Russians back in.
As such, a couple of years later, we found ourselves in a situation where the Russians had taken the wrong signal, believing that Europe would do nothing about Ukraine. It took the robust attack from my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley—sorry, my honourable Friend; he ought to be right honourable—to undo that damage and make sure that Russia was properly suspended again. Those are the powers that the British delegation to the Council of Europe can have and exercise.
There is some unfinished business. We rightly talk a lot about the Donbas at the moment, and we talk quite a lot about Crimea, but we have forgotten Cyprus.
There is a member state of the Council of Europe—Turkey—that, in 1974, invaded and occupied part of the territory of Cyprus, another member state. It is nearly 50 years since that happened, and the matter remains unresolved. There are still Turkish troops occupying soil of another sovereign state of the Council of Europe. That, in its own way, is just as wrong as what is happening in Ukraine.
I thank Chris Yvon, who was the permanent representative during my time as leader of the delegation. He provided massive support during our discussions about the Russian Federation, and contributed in an exemplary way to the work between an ambassador and Members of Parliament, advising and supporting us, and ensuring that we had the information we needed to do the job. I hope that the Foreign Office will recognise that. Finally, I would like to put on record my appreciation of the work done by the superb secretariat.
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