21/04/2026 | 19:47:05 Mr President, selecting the best possible candidates to hold judicial office is essential and in my time as a member of the Committee and its predecessor sub-committee, I think there have been significant improvements. I think one can say fairly now that all the women elected as judges are elected on merit, and it wasn't always that way. And secondly, many of the conflicts of interest identified in a series of critical reports by the European Centre for Law and Justice have been addressed... 21/04/2026 | 11:14:36 United Kingdom colleagues, I wish to bring some historical context to this important debate. As a newly elected MP in 1984, I was at the Grand Hotel in Brighton when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) blew up the hotel, attempting to murder our prime minister, but instead killing my parliamentary colleague Tony Berry. The IRA also murdered three other MPs. When I started out in politics in the 1970s, threats and violence from left-wing trade unionists were commonplace. But we were not... 26/01/2026 | 17:23:22 Thank you for calling me, Madam Chairman. I'm looking forward to the establishment of the New Democratic Pact committee, because this is a very important initiative. I think what is clear is that we have a Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe (Monitoring Committee), most of whose activities are conducted in private. We have, as the leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe said in his opening remarks, we've got a... 03/10/2025 | 10:45:56 As a member of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination for this year and having been to the meeting in Malta where this report was discussed, what concerned me was that, often, the Committee seems to engage in tokenism towards males whilst putting all the emphasis on the equality of women. I don't see any reason why we in this Parliamentary Assembly should be differentiating between sexual violence against men and boys as against sexual violence against women and children. It seems... 29/09/2025 | 17:17:00 Excusez-moi. On a point of order, in the light of the contents of this debate, I request that the Assembly annuls the decision of the Committee on the Election of Judges to the European Court of Human Rights to reject the Hungarian list on procedural grounds. The Committee of Ministers has confirmed that the right procedure was followed and it seems that the Committee on the Election of Judges to the European Court of Human Rights, on which I have the privilege of serving, was given... 31/01/2025 | 11:08:57 Mister President. Thank you. I think that the description "older person" can be quite patronising. And I don't know whether I fit into the definition or not. But what I do think is that this report has got some good points in it. And I'd like to address particularly paragraph 3 of the draft resolution which refers to this. It says "older persons experience age-based discrimination in all areas of life, especially in the workplace". And I'm going to illustrate the point here of double... 31/01/2025 | 10:10:09 Thank you, Mister President. And can I congratulate the rapporteur on this report and say that I very much support what it says. But there is one glaring omission in the report and it makes no mention of those millions of people who are suffering the wide range of Long Covid symptoms but not caused by having been infected with Covid-19 but by having had Covid-19 vaccines. Their suffering is recognised by medical practitioners and clinicians and described as Long post-Covid vaccination... 01/10/2024 | 18:03:12 Mister President, I share the views of the previous speaker in saying it's important that we should support the implementation of the values of the Council of Europe. And I think it's a pity, therefore, that we are not able to have a dialogue with parliamentarians from Azerbaijan during this debate and more widely within this Assembly. And whilst I share many of the concerns expressed by Ms Lise CHRISTOFFERSEN in her opening remarks, I don't think that we should be singling out Azerbaijan and... 12/10/2023 | 20:03:30 I apologise for the chairman's absence and the first vice-chairmans absence. Can I thank everybody for participating in this excellent debate? Can I think the rapporteur for having produced this report very quickly, and all the people behind her in the Secretariat who delivered? This is essentially a debate about a rules-based organisation. If we are a rules-based organisation, then members have to comply with the rules. We have a European Court of Human Rights, which helps member countries... 12/10/2023 | 19:42:10 Thank you, Mister President. On 29 October Türkiye will be celebrating the centenary of its foundation as a modern democracy with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. What better way could President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan mark this centenary than by releasing Mr Osman Kavala and thereby helping to reestablish Türkiye's commitment to the rule of law? As others have said, Ms Kavala spoke eloquently, and I thought with incredible restraint, at the meeting of our Committee about her husband's plight after the...