Perran Moon

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) on securing this important debate. As a fellow delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I can personally attest to her dedication in this area. I want to bring a Cornish perspective to the importance of the Council of Europe and the European convention on human rights—one that shines a light on our membership. First, the framework convention for the protection of national minorities, although less well known than the European convention on human rights, is one of the most comprehensive treaties to protect the rights of national minorities, including the Cornish people. Leaving the European convention on human rights would call into question our membership of the Council of Europe. Those who wish for that departure either have not considered the implications for Cornish national minority status, or they have considered those implications and do not care about the Cornish. There is also the European charter for regional or minority languages, which protects, supports and encourages minority languages such as Cornish, or Kernewek. These are important commitments to which the UK is a signatory. They are too often considered secondary, but they bring tangible social and cultural benefits to the people of Cornwall. If we lived in a world governed by the parties that wish to leave the European convention on human rights, we would risk leaving the Council of Europe altogether. Any move to withdraw from the European convention on human rights would likely cause us to leave the Council of Europe, putting at risk the protections and benefits on which Cornish people rely under those other conventions. In his ten-minute rule Bill last week, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who is regrettably not here today—I notified him that I was going to raise this—described leaving the European convention on human rights as “unfinished business.” Having played a key role in the economic damage caused by Brexit, it seems that he is back for more, determined to sever another vital limb of our international partnerships as he attempts to steer the country on to the rocks of isolationism. Some voices on the right argue that basic human rights hold us back. I believe they do quite the opposite. The hon. Member for Clacton will not talk about the other guarantees under the European convention on human rights: the right to life, the right to be free from torture and the right to liberty. As has been mentioned, bodies such as the Bonavero Institute at Oxford University have rightly said that some of the commentary on the European convention on human rights is misleading, often based on incendiary anecdotes involving chicken nuggets and pet cats. In reality, court rulings are far more complicated.