24/04/2026 | 10:32:44 Thank you, President, and greetings to all in this august place, in the hemicycle of the Council of Europe, with its central focus on the values we all cherish. I want to speak of a country that has a disregard for human rights, has no democratically elected government and knows nothing about the rule of law. I wish to speak about Haiti. Haiti is in the Caribbean, and you may well think that's a long way from here and perhaps not very relevant. Europe has left its mark on the Caribbean. The... 21/04/2026 | 18:19:40 Thank you Madam Chair, and thank you to my friend Mr Francesco VERDUCCI for such a wonderful report that has got us all thinking. And I would just like to come to this debate perhaps from a different angle. Of course, I support all that's been said about fundamental human rights and the dangers of the moment, but my angle is a different one because I am, and have been, a religious leader myself, the head of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, and still have a considerable role to play... 21/04/2026 | 11:38:13 Thank you President and colleagues, It's good to be here. I'm the rare member of this Assembly who has never had a death or harmful threat of any kind at all. And it has been important for me to hear the pain that's been reported, the personal experiences that the people have undergone and the widespread nature of the harm being done by irresponsible speech and the anonymised threats that come via the Internet. So I'm very glad I've heard what I've heard, but I can't add to it, except to say... 26/06/2025 | 18:12:40 It's simply that when we have a debate in the House of Lords, all speakers are obliged to stay throughout the debate. So I just looked expectantly. But for all of that, the words have been said. We've had three meetings with Georgian delegations that I've been part of in the last, well, since this year began. And on each occasion, I start by asking what's happened since the last time? And it gets worse and worse. And all I can say is that I dread coming in September, October, to meet them... 25/06/2025 | 10:52:50 No, no, not at all. I'm most grateful to the two great Danes who have introduced these debates and for all the thinking that the Culture Committee has gone through in order to bring these matters to our attention. I've listened carefully to the points that have been made. I share with Mr Petri HONKONEN the experience of having been my government's or my party's spokesperson for sport in the House of Lords in the British Parliament. And there I discovered some very interesting things that... 10/04/2025 | 18:45:43 Thank you, Madam President. And let me express my delight at the fact that this dimension, the relationship with Latin America, is being explored in this debate. Since I lived for quite a lot of my life in the Caribbean and have travelled through Latin America, I'm also delighted to have the Head of the Senate actually speak to us, a Mexican voice when we speak about Latin America and our friend back there, too. I hope that everybody in this chamber will continue when they open their atlases... 09/04/2025 | 11:09:18 President, forgive this stumble at the beginning. I thought I had another three minutes space before I entertain everybody with my ideas. It is a privilege to stand in this debate and take my part. And I'm grateful to Mr Frank SCHWABE and his collaborators in putting this report together. It is astonishing, however, that 25 pages are needed to spell out what all of us ought to know instinctively: that doing wrong things and risking losing one's trust is simply at odds with everything that... 29/01/2025 | 18:52:43 Thank you, President. And greetings to colleagues and friends. I note from the title of this debate that it states that it is one of the answers rather than the total solution, although many people have spoken as if this was the only way of dealing with an ageing population. And let's bear that in mind. But secondly, I am, of course, demographically aged myself, and hope that gives me authority to speak on this matter right now. Just earlier today, I chaired the meeting of the Committee on... 29/01/2025 | 11:18:16 Madam President, friends and colleagues, One of the main streams of historiography right now is called post-colonial history, and it examines the way that countries, often represented in this very hemicycle, manage the affairs of countries far away. If you asked historians, even historians, what was the first significant defeat of NAPOLEON, for example, they might debate between the withdrawal from Moscow in 1812 or the defeat at Waterloo in 1815. Few of them would talk about 1 January 1804... 28/01/2025 | 18:07:52 Thank you, President, and thank you, colleagues, for the impressive speeches that have been made. I don't need to repeat the statistics. They've been made and made again. Nor do I need, really, to protect Hamas from proper criticism. What happened on October 7 was horrendous, and it needs constantly to be in our minds. The way that Hamas has manipulated aspects of the case also needs to be recognised and kept in the front of our minds. But we're not debating that now. We're debating the fact...