Credentials of the United Kingdom delegation

5 May 1992

Doc. 6610

Report

on the credentials of the United Kingdom delegation

(Rapporteur: Mr SCHIEDER, Austria, SPÖ)

1. At the opening of the first sitting of the present part-Session Mr Hardy, speaking on behalf of the Labour members of the United Kingdom delegation, raised objections to the new credentials submitted by the United Kingdom authorities for their delegation to the 44th Ordinary Session of the Parliamentary Assembly. In accordance with Rule 6(5) of the Rules of Procedure, the credentials were referred, without debate, to the Committee on Rules of Procedure.

2. Article 25 of the Statute of the Council of Europe states that the Assembly shall consist of 'Representatives of each Member, elected by its Parliament from among the members thereof, or appointed from among the members of that Parliament, in such manner as it shall decide'. It adds, however, that each Member Government may 'make any additional appointments necessary when the Parliament is not in session and has not laid down the procedure to be followed in that case.

3. The existing practice of the Assembly (reflecting the opinions expressed in Recommendation 600, adopted by the Assembly on 18 April 1970) is that, following a general election, 'a reasonable delay' should be granted to a member State in the appointment of a new parliamentary delegation, 'but that this delay should not exceed six months'.

4. In challenging the credentials presented by the United Kingdom authorities, Mr Hardy drew attention both to the particular composition of those credentials, and to the method of appointment of the delegation from the United Kingdom.

5. The Committee on Rules of Procedure notes that the appointments to the United Kingdom delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly are made by the Executive Government, apparently without the United Kingdom Parliament having at any time specifically fixed (by Resolution or other formal means) a procedure to that end.

6. This practice, although it might be regarded by some as being at variance with a strict interpretation of Article 25 of the Statute, has not previously given rise to a formal challenge to the credentials of the United Kingdom delegation, either by United Kingdom members or other members of the Assembly; and the longstanding co-operation of all United Kingdom parties in these arrangements may be deemed to imply a widespread (if perhaps not unanimous) degree of consent to them, in a Parliament whose tradition over many centuries has been to act by convention and unwritten procedures in respect of a wide variety of decisions which in other parliaments would, as a matter of course, be embodied in formally adopted rules.

7. The Committee notes that in recent times at least one party in the United Kingdom Parliament has made internal arrangements for the election of its own component of the United Kingdom delegation to the Assembly. This is a welcome development, which accords more closely with the spirit of Article 25 of the Statute and with the frequently-expressed wish of the Assembly that national delegations should, as a matter of course, be elected by the national parliaments in such as manner as to reflect their political composition. It does not in itself, however, provide grounds for invalidating the credentials of the delegation as a whole - or of that part of it which is not so elected - unless it can be demonstrated that the practice adopted by the United Kingdom in nominating its delegation does not enjoy and has not enjoyed at least the de facto consent of the national Parliament.

8. The Committee has no evidence to suggest that the latter situation is the case. And so long as Article 25 of the Statute continues to permit the appointment (as distinct from the election) of a national delegation under procedures decided by the national Parliament, the Committee does not believe that either the Committee or the Assembly have sufficient grounds to reject outright the credentials of a delegation from the United Kingdom constructed in this well-established, and so far unchallenged, manner.

9. Although Mr Hardy, in challenging the credentials of the delegation, drew attention to the non-elective procedures followed in Westminster, the present problems do not arise so much from the procedures themselves as from the specific decisions taken by the United Kingdom Government in seeking to maintain the continuity of United Kingdom representation in the Assembly in the aftermath of the General Election of 9 April.

10. One option open to the United Kingdom authorities, for which parallels exist would have been to have notified the Assembly, within the spirit of Recommendation 600, of its wish to extend the credentials of the delegation appointed for the 43rd Ordinary Session, on a temporary basis, and for a period not exceeding six months from the date of the elections, in order to allow time for the usual procedures to be followed in constructing a new delegation reflecting the wishes of the political parties and the altered balance of parties in the House of Commons. Such a decision would have resulted in the temporary extension of the mandates of four members of the delegation who had ceased to be Members of Parliament as a result of the General Election.

11. Instead, however, the United Kingdom Government chose to make some changes in the composition of that part of the delegation drawn from the House of Lords; to re-appoint most of those House of Commons members who had been returned at the General Election; and to appoint one member of the House of Commons new to the delegation ; and to re-appoint one - but not all - of the former members who had not been re-elected. Mr Hardy has not objected as such to the re-appointment of an individual who no longer holds a national parliamentary mandate.

Rather, he has argued that the effect of not extending this privilege to the other former Members concerned has resulted in the under-representation of his own political party in the delegation.

12. The Committee has no grounds for challenging Mr Hardy's assertion; it also has no authority to examine the detailed political balance within the United Kingdom delegation or, for that matter, within any other delegation in the Assembly. Rule 6(5) of the Rules of Procedure refers merely to 'the principle that national parliamentary delegations should reflect the various currents of opinion within their Parliaments'. In our view deliberately, the Rule does not require any exact reflection of the balance of parties and opinions in the parliament to be reflected in the delegation. Moreover, another principle, set out for example in Assembly Doc. 6101, is that the Assembly should seek to avoid interference in the internal political affairs of a member State and should by extension not involve itself in the detailed analysis of the political composition of a national delegation. To do so might be invidious in more than one case.

13. It is quite evident that the delegation whose credentials have been represented by the United Kingdom authorities does in general terms reflect the main currents of opinion in the United Kingdom Parliament; the precise balance to be achieved within those currents of opinion remains a matter for the United Kingdom Parliament and political parties themselves to resolve. It is not a matter for the Assembly.

14. So far as concerns the practice of extending or renewing the mandate of a member of the Assembly who has ceased to hold a national parliamentary mandate, the Committee notes that a small number of precedents exist, and that, indeed, at least two former Presidents of the Assembly (Mr de Koster in 1980 and Mr de Afeilza in 1982) were only able to complete their terms of office as a result of what in both cases might have been regarded as a flexible interpretation of the Statute and of the Assembly's Rules. It is, however, a practice which the Committee (without any reflection on the personalities involved) cannot regard as particularly conducive to the establishment and enforcement of the principle that delegations should be representative of their national parliaments. It would therefore not be constructive for the Committee to suggest that the practice should be extended by the re-nomination of other former members of the United Kingdom delegation (even for a very limited period), however meritorious their individual claims, or the claims of their political party, might seem to be.

15. In conclusion, the Committee on Rules of Procedure regard the problems raised in connection with the nomination of the United Kingdom delegation as giving rise to legitimate concern about the procedures adopted by the United Kingdom authorities and Parliament, and as greatly strengthening the case for a revision of Article 25 of the Statute of the Council of Europe so as to require member States to adopt procedures more consistent with contemporary democratic attitudes and aspirations. To this extent the case arises at a timely moment, when the revision of this and other articles of the Statute is under active consideration by the Ad Hoc Committee on the revision of the Statute and by all Assembly committees to which that Committee's draft proposals have now been referred for comment. For its own part, the Committee on Rules of Procedure will actively pursue the revision of Article 25 on these lines.

16. In the meantime, however, the Committee does not believe that, in the light of the present provisions of Article 25 of the Statute and of the relevant Rules of Procedure, or in the light of the practice and precedents of the Assembly, there are sufficient grounds for rejecting the credentials presented by the United Kingdom authorities for the United Kingdom delegation to the 44th Ordinary Session of the Parliamentary Assembly.

17. Consequently the Committee on Rules of Procedure unanimously proposes -

a. that the Assembly should approve the credentials of the United Kingdom delegation, until the opening of the 2nd part of the 44th ordinary session to be held on 30 June 1992 in Budapest ;

b. that the United Kingdom authorities should be urged to take steps to appoint a new delegation from among the members of the United Kingdom Parliament at the earliest opportunity, in time for the submission of their credentials for ratification by the Assembly at the 2nd part of its 44th Ordinary Session (30 June 1992) ;

c. that the United Kingdom Government and Parliament should be invited, as a matter of urgency, to review the procedures for the appointment of their delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly in order to bring them more closely in line with the spirit of the Statute of the Council of Europe and the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly.

18. Moreover the Committee proposes that the Assembly should

a. ensure that the letter and spirit of the relevant provisions of the Rules of Procedure (Rule 6) and of Recommendation 600 (1970) be fully observed ;

b. seek in due course appropriate amendments of Article 25 of the Council of Europe's Statute.

19. Finally, the Committee on Rules of Procedure considers that the points raised above should be borne in mind when the Assembly examines the consequences of the geographical enlargement of the Council of Europe for the Assembly's work and procedure.

Reporting committee: Committee on Rules of Procedure

Budgetary implications for the Assembly : None

Reference to committee : decision of the Assembly on 4 May 1992

Decision : unanimously adopted by the committee on 5 May 1992.

Members of the committee : Sir Anthony Durant (Chairman) Mr. Dimmer (Vice-Chairman), Mrs Aguiar, Albrink, MM. Alloncle, André (Alternate: Pistre), Andreis, Gudmundur Bjarnason, Borg, Capanna, Colombo, Faulds (Alternate: Hardy), Sir Geoffrey Finsberg, MM. Franck, Galanos, Gül, Gundersen, Junghanns, Karcsay, Kozlowski, Laakso, Lemoine, Leyden (Alternate : Ferris), Marten, Moya, Rokofyllos, Schieder, Schiesser, Mrs Soutendijk-van-Appeldoorn, Mrs Terborg (Alternate : Matschie), M. Thissen.

NB: The names of the members present at the meeting are underlined.

Secretary of the committee : Mr. Heinrich