30/01/2020 | 11:25:19 Thank you Mr President. I'd like to start by looking at the basis on which this report was produced. Paragraph 9 of this report highlights a number of issues. First it highlights that Azerbaijan is reforming its judicial system including the prison system and the criminal justice system. Second it highlights that Azerbaijan is making progress on judicial independence and the reform of the prosecutor's office. Thirdly it highlights that the number of people being arrested is declining and that... 29/01/2020 | 10:59:18 Thank you Mr President. I welcome this report and the resolution and recommendations. Let me start by raising two points. First the right to freedom of thought conscience and religion is a fundamental right that requires comprehensive protection. Religion of belief are crucial to our identity. Asking one not to act in accordance to one's religion or belief is contrary to existing international legal standards. A soldier may kill in accordance with existing laws of war and armed conflict but... 28/01/2020 | 17:17:11 Thank you very much Madam President. I'd like to start off as indeed other speakers have by congratulating the rapporteur Lord George FOULKES on an excellent report and for the comprehensive way in which this issue has been tackled. I think of particular interest to me was the way in which he set out in individual countries what is happening and how that has has come through in terms of what has happened to individual journalists. The particular thing that struck me was the situation in Malta... 28/01/2020 | 10:50:03 Thank you, Mr President. I would like to refer people to the report and to paragraph 127. It says in the report: "the need for continuing reforms of the judiciary is clear and recognised." It goes on to say it is undeniable that the Polish justice system and judiciary are and have been facing systemic problems and challenges that affect the rule of law, especially with regard to the efficiency of the administration of justice. So what we are talking about here is not challenging the need for... 04/10/2019 | 11:03:10 Thank you, Madam President. I congratulate my fellow colleague Martin WHITFIELD for taking over this report and for presenting it. And I'm sure, having looked through it, there is a lot of interest to all of us in this report. In particular, I was struck by the amount of time that was given to the the provision of language training and I think that that is an important part of this report and of the the agenda that is here. So there is a lot that we can learn from this report and a lot of... 04/10/2019 | 10:16:04 Thank you Mr President. I think this report is very important and I would certainly agree that we should preserve the cultural heritage of the Jewish communities. But I do want to stress that there is something that we need to avoid here, and that is seeing Jewish cultural heritage as if it belongs to a dead civilisation. It doesn't belong to a dead civilisation. It belongs to a very live one, that is still part of our communities today. I stand here as a trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day... 03/10/2019 | 18:50:53 Thank you, Madame President. Yesterday, I said in the debate on the Development Bank that I welcomed the concentration that that Bank was placing on dealing with climate change. I think it's important for us to show that we can fund the sort of issues that we talked about in this hemicycle. Because climate change is fundamental. As Mr Paul GAVAN said, with a major hurricane facing the Azores and likely to hit the coast of Ireland very shortly, it has never been more urgent to address this... 02/10/2019 | 16:21:19 Thank you, Madam President. I would like to start what I have to say by praising the rapporteur and her comprehensive report on this. I think it's also worth pointing out the excellent cooperative way in which she has gone about producing this report, to which the Governor has already paid tribute. And let me say, too, that it was a great pleasure to see the Governor here and to hear directly from him about his own plans for the future. I stand here in some humility because I come from a... 02/10/2019 | 10:24:30 Thank you, Mr President. I would like to start where Lord BALFE began and make a gentle criticism, because I think that this report only deals with half the issue, and the context of looking at this report is the context of alternative dispute resolution. Alternative dispute resolution exists to stop people having to take cases to court, which is both of long duration and expensive, and to be able to sort them out by means of arbitration, by means of mediation, by means of expert... 01/10/2019 | 10:36:56 Thank you Madame President. I'd like too to thank the rapporteur for a fascinating report and I'd like to turn to paragraph three of that report, where he says "disclosing serious failings in the public interest must not remain the preserve of those citizens who are prepared to sacrifice their personal lives and those of their relatives, as too often happened in the past." I think that that illustrates the point of why we are debating this issue this morning. It is also a very appropriate...