§ Mr. AllenTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the Government's current policy towards the right of460W individuals automatically to take cases to the European Court and the other reforms proposed by the Council of Europe.
§ Mr. Charles WardleReforms of the machinery of the European convention on human rights are provided for in the draft 11th protocol to the convention. The United Kingdom proposes to sign the protocol at the meeting of Council of Europe Ministers on 11 May, and to ratify it in due course.
The United Kingdom has made a major contribution to the reforms, under which the European Commission and Court of Human Rights will be replaced by a single court. We have, for example, taken the lead in securing within the protocol effective and valuable provision for the friendly settlement of cases, for the re-hearing of cases brought by individual application and, in the final negotiations at Strasbourg on 21 to 25 March, for the re-hearing of "inter-state" cases.
As we explained in those negotiations, there are good reasons why the right of individual petition to the new court should be optional and renewable, whereas the protocol provides for this to be mandatory. We have decided to accept this in order to allow the institutional reforms to which we have made such a contribution to come into effect.