24/06/2021 | 18:09:20 Thank you, Mister President. I would like to start by congratulating the rapporteur for having introduced a very important subject. I would agree with Mr Michael Aastrup JENSEN that transparency in the funding of politics and of political parties is essential if we are going to ensure that democracy can function and that it can function without interference. That sounds very simple, it sounds very obvious but I'm afraid that it's not obvious or very simple but it is very essential. This needs... 23/06/2021 | 17:45:22 Thank you, Madam Chair, I am here and it's a pleasure to follow my colleague from Iceland and to agree with almost everything that she has said. I think this is an excellent report, because we should not recognise the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia. Crimea is Ukrainian territory and the thing that we need to keep our focus on is the Ukrainian political prisoner. For me the concern revolves around the human rights abuses that have been taking place on the Crimean Tatars. Crimean Tatars... 23/06/2021 | 12:04:04 Thank you, Mister President. I am absolutely committed to the Istanbul Convention as is the UK government, and we are in the process, as the Secretary General has said, of moving to ratify that. Violence against women seriously violates and impacts or nullifies women's enjoyment of their human rights. It should be stamped out as quickly as possible. But in the course of moving towards the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, which we think is an excellent standard and excellent benchmark... 22/06/2021 | 17:18:28 I can agree with the Rapporteur on a number of points. Let me start with one of those. It is that in the UK we are actively considering the experience and circumstances of people right across society. There's no doubt that we will all be changed by the experience of Covid-19. We can ensure that we'll emerge stronger and more united as a result. In the UK the government is committed to levelling up and making the UK a country where equality of opportunity exists for everyone. We are committed... 22/06/2021 | 10:39:50 I'm afraid that I must take a somewhat different stance to those who have spoken before, as I find this report rather confusing. I'm sure that the confusion comes out of the fact that earlier in my career I had worked for the BBC as a presenter, so I do understand the pressures that journalists are under. But I'd like to think that I ask questions as a presenter to elicit a response rather than to make or to score political points. Now I am all for transparency in the media and I fully... 21/06/2021 | 18:13:15 Thank you, Madam President. It is interesting that we have created so much controversy over this report. I agree that we, as politicians, need to be able to express our mandates as fully as possible, but there is also a limit on what can be said in many countries as the report points out. In my own country, for example, we are not allowed to speak about a court case that is being sent to trial or is on trial. This is sensible to prevent political interference in a judicial matter and that we... 22/04/2021 | 12:42:38 Thank you Madam President. Better luck this time with the technology. I think that I would like to recall the presentation made by my conservative colleague. What he said was, and I paraphrase it, you could not get a piece of paper between me and Mr Thomas HAMMARBERG over this report and over the situation in Turkey. Mr Thomas HAMMARBERG is of course a socialist and I am a conservative. That shows there is no partisanship and there is no bias from us against Turkey. We've always stressed that... 22/04/2021 | 11:52:33 Thank you Madam President and I apologise for the technological links that have prevented me from joining so far. There are only two points that I wish to raise. The first is the Istanbul Convention and the second is the independence of the judiciary. The withdrawal by the president from the Istanbul Convention without any parliamentary debate is indeed a devastating a piece of news as has been demonstrated this week on a number of different occasions. And withdrawing from a human rights... 21/04/2021 | 17:22:58 Thank you very much, Mr President. I had not quite seen myself as the champion of Anglo-Saxon Europe, but there we are. I would like to thank the rapporteurs for their reports on this. They raised some very important points. The importance of this is, firstly, in what they do to link chronic and long-term illness with premature mortality, that is a very important point. But the second point – that they do mention throughout their report – is the effect that this has on lives and on the... 21/04/2021 | 12:07:13 Thank you Mr President. I would like to begin by giving my warmest congratulations to both rapporteurs who produced excellent reports on this. A number of people have said that Belarus is not of course a member of the Council of Europe. If it were a member of the Council of Europe, in the face of these elections, it would be chucked out because this is not an acceptable way of behaving. Nobody could have sat there after the elections and watch the mass protests with a hard heart and not sided...