Member

The UK may have left the EU but we are still, as a country, a very active member of the Council of Europe, which was founded by Churchill to ensure that groups of people could not be targeted with impunity either by Governments or by others. I should add that I am a member of the current UK delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In May 2024 the Council of Europe published its recommendations on combating hate crime, signed by all Council of Europe Ministers, including a Conservative Minister on behalf of the UK. The document focuses a great deal on the structure of justice for hate crimes, which is absolutely correct. After all, this is really what we are talking about; it is what leads us to crimes. I suspect that we will get into more of that detail both on the next group and on Amendment 416E, which we will probably debate next Thursday. I am really sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, degrouped his amendments, because there are overlapping issues right the way through this. I will quote very briefly from this Council of Europe document: