Daniel Hamilton: Cameron’s referendum pledge has already strengthened the Conservatives’ hand in Europe

Daniel Hamilton is a Partner at Bell Pottinger LLP.  He writes in a personal capacity. 

Over the past two decades, it has become de rigueur for British Prime Ministers to deliver speeches about the importance of European reform. Such speeches have been packed with buzzwords such as “flexibility”, “accountability” and “subsidiary”, yet utterly devoid of specific policies or proposals.

John Major's government made much of their defence of the British national interest in securing an opt-out from the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty, yet ultimately threw Britain's weight behind the creation of the Euro and a pathway to the introduction of the very cross-border justice policies which the Home Secretary is now seeking Britain’s withdrawal from.

Many market-oriented Eurosceptics were delighted by Tony Blair’s speech to the European Parliament in 2005 when he called for an EU designed to “enhance our ability to compete, to help our people cope with globalisation, to let them embrace its opportunities and avoid its dangers”. Of course, as was so often with Tony Blair, his rhetoric did not match the reality of his deeds.

Finally, while he should be commended for resisting Mandelsonian demands for Britain to join the Euro, it is Gordon Brown’s signature that brought the wretched Lisbon Treaty into force – and with it the surrender of the British veto in more than forty policy areas.

Talk, however, is cheap.  Actions are what matter.

Daniel Hamilton: We should register our discontent about Azerbaijan's human rights record

Daniel Hamilton works in government relations and is a former Conservative councillor.  He writes in a solely personal capacity. Follow Daniel on Twitter.

On Wednesday, two key resolutions will be debated in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concerning human rights in Azerbaijan. 

Such resolutions will be crucial in persuading President Aliyev and the Azeri government to pursue much needed human rights reforms in a country where stunning economic success has yet to be matched with respect for freedom of expression and assembly.  With the outcome of the vote on a knife-edge, Conservative delegates must send a clear message in support of democracy and freedom of speech and vote in favour.  

The first resolution, authored by Maltese MP Joseph Grech and Spanish Senator Pedro Agramunt calls upon the Assembly to endorse a report prepared by the Council of Europe’s special envoys for Azerbaijan outlining “growing concerns with regard to rule of law and respect for human rights’, and calling for the “full implementation” of basic freedoms including freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of association. 

The second resolution focuses on the issue of political prisoners in Azerbaijan; including journalists, bloggers and peaceful protesters sentenced to lengthy prison terms for opposing the Aliyev government.  The report concludes that the judicial process in Azerbaijan “can be and appears to be abused for political ends, in order to intimidate, silence, or otherwise neutralise opponents seen as threats by the ruling elite, both activists of secular or religious opposition parties and independent civil society activists, lawyers, human rights defenders, and journalists”. 

Daniel Hamilton: Time to sever our Kremlin links and forge a new alliance

Daniel Hamilton is Director of European Affairs at Bell Pottinger.  A long-standing Conservative Party member, he writes in a personal capacity. Follow Daniel on Twitter.

Since his arrival in Downing Street in May 2010, David Cameron has been an indefatigable advocate for human rights.

The government’s staunch support for the Arab Spring, culminating in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, the holding of free and fair elections in Tunisia and sweeping constitutional reforms in Morocco are a testament to its record on this issue. David Cameron’s personal leadership in bringing about tougher sanctions on Europe’s last dictatorship in Belarus and the increasingly unstable regime in Tehran are a testament to his personal commitment to realising democracy around the world.

Fifty years ago, the Council of Europe was established as a formal means by which to forge voluntary cooperation on issues such as technical and legal standards, democracy and human rights issues. Included within the CoE is the Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) which brings together MPs from all member countries to discuss topical issues of concern to citizens across Europe. Human rights issues are ordinarily top of the agenda.

While its legislative and political influence has been gradually eroded by the rapid development of Brussels-led supranationalism, the fact that the organisation’s membership stretches beyond the borders of the EU means that the Council of Europe remains an effective means by which Western European countries can share legislative experiences and build relationships with political figures in Turkey, the Ukraine, Serbia and emerging democracies in the South Caucasus.

Daniel Hamilton: Police assault laws should be extended to healthcare professionals

On Tuesday night, my sister Anna was attacked in her place of work.  The photograph to the right shows the bruising and cuts she received when a patient in the hospital in which she works punched her in the face.   I have used this photograph with her permission.

In many hospitals, most medical staff no longer consider violent assaults an anomaly, but a day-to-day occupational hazard.  In recent weeks, Anna has been scratched, throttled and bitten - quite apart from the diet of vile verbal abuse has been subjected to on a daily basis. 

In the majority of cases, NHS staff do not press ahead with prosecutions against violent patients; partly out of recognition that the actions of these drug and alcohol addled patients are beyond their control and partly out of a lack of faith in the criminal justice system to protect them.

Their stoicism, in the face of such abuse, is testament to their selfless nature and absolute commitment to providing their patients with the very best care they can.

No public servant, however – let alone one who works thirteen hour shifts battling to save the lives of the victims of road traffic accidents, unprovoked stabbings and house fires – should be put in this position.  

It is a crime in the United Kingdom, under Section 89 of the Police Act 1996, to assault a police officer in the execution of his or her duty.   Being found guilty of this offence carries a custodial sentence of up to six months, in addition to any other penalty a court may impose for causing grievous or actual bodily harm on the officer in question.

Parliament should expand the scope of this act to on-duty medical personnel, including doctors, nurses, paramedics, healthcare assistants and other hospital staff who interact with patients.

Not only do we owe it to our overworked, underpaid and so often overlooked NHS staff to protect them from threats in the workplace, but also to send a strong signal that abuse and violence will be met with the harshest of possible consequences under the law.

Daniel Hamilton: The Home Secretary should think again on the Passenger Name Records database

Daniel Hamilton is Director of the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch.

Before last year’s general election, the Conservative Party made a clear pledge to reduce the personal information held on individuals by central government.  The coalition agreement formalised this pledge, committing the government to “restoring the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power”.

While they have held to this pledge in respect of scrapping ID cards and abolishing the ContactPoint database, a £200 million system which was to have centrally logged the names, ages, addresses, schools, GPs and other private and personal details of 11 million children in the UK, their record has not been entirely positive.

The Government have, for example, opted to plough ahead with the Labour government’s Intercept Modernisation Programme system to log all text messages, phone calls and e-mails sent in the United Kingdom and they have reneged on their promise to abolish the Summary Care Record database of our medical data.

Mindful of the Coalition’s genuinely mixed record to date on civil liberties issues, the Home Secretary’s announcement in respect of the Passenger Name Records (PNR) system is deeply disappointing.

Daniel Hamilton: The International Court of Justice must investigate the ethnic cleansing of Georgians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia

Daniel Hamilton is Director of the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch

Late yesterday evening, the International Court of Justice rejected a case brought by the Government of Georgia against Russia for an immediate investigation of their claims that Georgians have been subjected to ethnic cleansing in the separatist enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  

The ruling is both disappointing and, given the overwhelming weight of evidence accumulated over the past two decades to support the Georgian government’s position, nonsensical. The ruling did, however, reject Russia’s central claim that no "dispute" exists between their country and Georgia, with court justices calling on both parties to conduct further negotiations before the Republic of Georgia’s case can be examined in detail.

The Russian Federation will surely champion the ruling as a victory for its ongoing campaign to wrench 20% of Georgia’s sovereign territory from the control of Tbilisi.  Short term celebrations on the part of the Kremlin aside, the ruling does nothing to either strengthen the case for the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia or weaken the evidence of Russian-backed ethnic cleansing in the provinces.

In Abkhazia alone, the total number of Georgians who have been expelled from their homes since the outbreak of conflict in 1992 is estimated by the International Crisis Group to stand anywhere between 200,000 and 250,000.  The formal position of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, as adopted at its Budapest, Lisbon and Istanbul summits in 1994, 1996 and 1997, is to recognise such mass expulsions as "war crimes" on the part of Russian-backed separatists.  In a clear violation of a May 2008 resolution of the United National General Assembly, nothing has been done by the occupation in the region in order to preserve the property rights of those expelled, with many of their homes being bulldozed to make way for housing complexes funded by Moscow. 

Daniel Hamilton: BBC local radio stations - allow advertising to help them survive

It was reported yesterday that the BBC is considering an overhaul of its local radio network; scrapping local news packages and programming for all but the breakfast and ‘drivetime’ slots and filling the rest of the day with content from Radio 5 Live.

On the face of it, this move makes a lot of sense.  It clearly makes little commercial sense for the BBC to replicate the costs of making three news programmes in areas in close proximity to one another such as Kent, Sussex and Surrey.  Similarly, it is wrong that BBC licence fee payers should be expected to continue throwing good money after bad at programmes with poor listening figures.

Many – myself included – believe that the best way forward for television and radio broadcasting in the UK is the wholesale transfer of the BBC to the private sector.   Politically, however, the will for this move is lacking to such an extent as to make it nothing more than a pipe-dream.  Instead, solutions must be found to minimise the licence fee so as to reduce the cost of the BBC’s services place upon the general public.  (Let us not forget that the licence fee is the most regressive of taxes – and a "tax" is what it is – placing a disproportionately large financial burden on the poorest in society).

While many valid criticisms of the BBC can be made, my argument with the corporation has never had anything to do with its local radio network, which is the part of the network which comes closest to fulfilling the ideal of “public service broadcasting” they are supposed to implement.  Their programmes are already frugally-produced, their content directly relevant to the communities they are broadcast to and extremely effective in allowing local charities and community groups to promote their work.  At risk of sounding twee, local radio is an important part of the "Big Society".

As such, I believe it would be short-sighted for the corporation to arbitrarily reduce the levels of programming it provides on its 40 local radio stations without first working with the government to find a way to make the stations financially self-sustainable as commercial enterprises.

One such way to do this – which would please neither the purists wishing for immediate BBC privatisation or the anti-reform brigade at the National Union of Journalists – would be to allow the corporation to "marketise" its assets and lift the restrictions on commercial advertising on local radio stations.

The BBC have already confirmed that they would be looking to retain locally-produced broadcasting on its breakfast and "drivetime" slots, which appears to indicate the timeslots already have listening audiences which make their continuation ‘commercially’ viable.  Given this, advertising on such programmes would clearly be an attractive prospect for many businesses operating in the area they broadcast to.  While programmes at other times of day may not attract the same audience share, they would no doubt also attract some level of funding in terms of branded sponsorship and other advertising.

Audience figures for BBC Radio Kent valid up until the end of February 2011, for example, suggest that the station recorded an audience share of 255,000 listeners as compared to the largest commercial network Heart Kent with 393,000.  In Manchester, the BBC’s local station had 228,000 as compared to Key 103’s 493,000.  

While the BBC’s market share in both of these areas is lower than their commercial competitors, it is nonetheless substantial enough to derive a viable income with which to maintain its present service levels without placing further demands upon the licence fee.  Furthermore, given that the BBC’s local networks are largely focussed upon local news and features packages as opposed to playing music, they are not providing a service which is in direct competition with one which is provided by the private sector.

These local stations deserve a chance to sink or swim.

The BBC Charter does not, at present, allow any form of commercial advertising on its television and radio networks, although it is now permitted on BBC Online services outside the UK.  In order for advertising to be permitted, the BBC Trust (soon to be chaired by Lord Patten) would have to make a specific request to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Jeremy Hunt.

In the interests of continuing to provide valuable local broadcasting which would not place a cost burden upon licence fee payers, I hope Lord Patten and the BBC Trust will consider making such a request.  It would undoubtedly be enthusiastically approved.

Daniel Hamilton: Winners and losers on Kosovo's third birthday

 By Daniel Hamilton

Three years ago today, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia.  Within hours of the National Assembly’s unanimous vote to secede from Serbia, the United Kingdom, France and Germany joined the United States in recognising Europe’s newest member state.

To great international fanfare Kosovo’s inaugural Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi declared Kosovo would be a country in which there were no "winners or losers" in the battle between the country’s Serb and Albanian populations.

Three years on, such a vision has failed to materialise. 

The situation in Mitrovica, a town of 110,000 located along the province’s northernmost frontier with Serbia, neatly encapsulates the stark realities of life in today’s Kosovo. 

Since the end of the war, Mitrovica has been almost entirely ethnically divided.  On the north side of the River Ibar, a sludge-coloured stream working its way to the Black Sea, are ethnic Serbs, on the south side, the Albanians. 

Like the iconic example of the divided city of Mostar in Bosnia, the two groups are kept apart by NATO troops who patrol the gaudy modern bridge supposed to link the two communities. 

Unlike Mostar, however, where divisions between Bosnians and Croats were created by war, such divisions already existed in Kosovo long before a single shot had been fired or drop of blood had been spilled.  While Bosnians and Croats spoke the same language, intermarried and studied together, no such kinship has ever existed between Kosovo’s Serbs and Albanians.  The division of the two ethnicities is – and was – absolute.

Interview with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili

Prior to the Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008, and the occupation of one fifth of its country by Moscow's troops, few people had heard of the Republic of Georgia, formerly part of the Soviet Union. Even fewer had heard of their 43-year-old President Mikheil Saakashvili who was swept into office on a wave of public support after the ousting of the corrupt Eduard Shevardnadze.

In office since the ‘Rose Revolution’ of November 2003, two very different and distinct pictures exist of Saakashvili.

To his supporters, he’s “Misha”, a modern-day King David IV who has battled his country’s enemies - internal and external - while at the same time putting Georgia on the path to real democracy, economic prosperity and international respect. To his enemies, he’s a hot-headed autocrat whose provocative choice of language and pig-headed obstinacy has imperilled not only Georgian democracy but the country’s very survival as an independent nation state.

I had the opportunity to spend an hour with him last Wednesday evening, while on a visit to the country’s capital city of Tbilisi, to explore his record in government.

Daniel Hamilton: Join Big Brother Watch’s campaign against the EU’s INDECT surveillance project

It is highly likely that many people will have heard of the European Commission’s £10 million INDECT project, the canny title for the “Intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environment”.  In reality, you’re probably not really supposed to have anyway...

Let’s cut to the chase.

In the project’s own words, the EU has tasked scientists with creating a system which will allow for the “registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information” accessed online in the EU in order to detect terrorists operating online.

While the words used to describe the project might appear impenetrable to all but the geekiest of computer boffins, the intention of the project is clear: the creation of a vast database of all web sites, discussion forums, file servers and peer-to-peer networks accessed by the EU’s 500 million citizens.

In amongst the sea of technocratic language on the project’s website, one can find a rather scary video in which buccaneering, swashbuckling Eurocrats are seen quite literally saving humankind from the scourge of organised crime.  It looks like something out of Spooks. 

Add in the additional research INDECT is doing into facial recognition technologies and here’s what they’re aiming for:

Civil liberties concerns aside, the implantation of such a system would, by default, increase the European Union’s activism in the field of justice and home affairs policy.  This would be to the clear detriment of national governments and police forces, many of whose jobs are already complicated by having to jump through bureaucratic hoops imposed by EuroPol and the Standing Committee on Operational Cooperation on Internal Security.

The EU has “form” when it comes to seeking to monitor the internet. As Iain Dale highlighted way back in September 2008, a group of MEPs attempted to pass a report “clarifying the status, legal or otherwise, of weblogs" with bloggers being asked to provide a “disclosure of interests” to an unspecified central authority.  Mercifully, the proposal failed to advance beyond its first reading.

A Written Declaration – a tool similar to an Early Day Motion – has been tabled by a group of MEPs demanding that the Commission end its secrecy about INDECT and increase the level of transparency surrounding the project.

The Declaration clearly calls on the Commission to uphold its obligation to "safeguard civil liberties", expresses "concern about function creep, the possible impact on fundamental rights and the danger that researched technologies or collected information are used by public actors or third parties" and demands that the Commission "define a clear and strict mandate for the research goal, the application and the end users of INDECT".

You can download the text of the Written Declaration here.

While, alas, it appears the project cannot be stopped dead in its tracks, we must take all possible steps to ensure INDECT’s scope remains narrow as possible and that the ultimate application of any technology developed is hugely constrained.

Please do e-mail your MEP asking them to put their name to the “Written Declaration on INDECT (intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environment)”. 

Their contact details can be found on the website of the UK Office of the European Parliament.

Daniel Hamilton: Syria - Corruption, censorship, and the veneer of democracy

By Daniel Hamilton

It has been nearly eight years since John Bolton’s ‘Beyond the Axis of Evil’ speech to the Heritage Foundation which first brought the Syrian regime’s oppressive tactics and dangerous dalliances in Islamic extremism to public note. 

Since that time, President Bashar al-Assad’s administration have conducted one of the most notable global public relations campaigns ever witnessed with numerous Western pundits hailing the country’s the “progress” the state has made in the field of human rights and democracy.  In reality, Syria can be held up as a great case study for Middle East democratisation; not because of any true democratic or economic reforms, but as an example of how a huge state-funded spin operation can present a few smart hotels as evidence of a liberalising and modernising government.

A brazen example of the deceitful public relations operation being waged by Damascus can be found in the recent coverage of the powerful regime insider and political fixer Rami Makhluf.  The World Finance Magazine’s Top 100 list of those who have made the most significant contribution to “fiscal and economic progress across the globe" described him as:

“A genuine leader, well known for his strong will and for his high personal and professional ethics...  He plays a role in Syria’s vibrant economic development, investing his enthusiasm and energy to set a wind of change in the business environment. Makhlouf has a rock-solid reputation as a visionary that realises his vision. Philanthropic, a family man and sport passionate, he masters the art of work – life balance”

How times change. This isn’t quite how he was described by the US State Department in 2008. 

Daniel Hamilton: Georgia’s claims about the South Ossetia conflict have been vindicated

My friend and fellow ConservativeHome contributor Carl Thomson recently wrote an interesting piece on this website about getting the Anglo-Russian relationship back on track.   Included in the article were several fair points, such as the imperative for the UK to strengthen trading links with the Moscow and the benefits Russian investment brings to both the City of London and technology sector.

One issue I feel the need to challenge Carl on, however, is the issue of the factual inaccuracies in his article regarding the Russian aggression towards and occupation of large parts of the Republic of Georgia – a sovereign nation whose territorial integrity is championed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. 

In referring the bloody war in the country which took place in August 2007 claiming the lives of almost 400 people, he descibes “Georgia’s assault on South Ossetia”.  Such a description accords with the Kremlin’s PR message, yet not with any conception of reality.

While David Cameron was the first foreign politician to travel to Tbilisi in the grim days of that five day invasion to lend his support to the Georgian people, others since have fallen for the ridiculous notion that Georgia would have dared to have started a war with Russia.  Indeed, such a turn of events would have seen Georgia’s President Saakashvili willfully deploy his country’s 21,000 active soldiers against Russian standing army’s 1,027,000 troops. 

Dan Hamilton: After years of vote rigging and human rights abuses, it’s time to get tough with Lukashenko's Belarus

Looking at the vibrancy of Eastern European states today, it’s hard to believe that just over twenty years ago much of the continent lay under a cloak of authoritarianism and communist oppression. 

The two decades that have since past are littered with inspiring examples of the power of democracy; from the anti-communist uprisings of the early 1990s to the symbolic transition of power from Lech Wałęsa to Aleksander Kwaśniewski in Poland’s 1995 Presidential election that proved former communist countries had not simply replaced one cult of personality with another.

Sadly, such progress towards improved human rights and democracy appears to have eluded the people of Belarus – a land-locked country of ten million people sandwiched between Poland in the west and Russia and the Ukraine to the east.   Indeed, for the past sixteen years, the administration of Alexander Lukashenko has ruled with an iron first; brutally suppressing opposition movements, flagrantly abusing human rights and relentlessly seeking to concentrate all power in the President’s office.

Aware of the negative reputation his country has amassed internationally, Lukashenko has fought hard in recent years to recast himself as a western-leaning reformist; talking the language of democracy to the west one day while pursuing a policy of slavish subservience to the Kremlin on another.  Indeed, even ordinarily-sane politicians such as Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė have been willing to do Lukashenko’s bidding in the EU corridors of power recently under the misapprehension that his continued hold on power would “limit the influence of Russia” – a curious observation given Moscow’s expressed policy of providing Belarus with cheap energy in exchange for bolstering its regional influence.

Reflections on Kosovo’s first general election since independence

On Sunday, Kosovo held its first parliamentary elections since its declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008.   If exit polls are to be believed, the centre-left Prime Minister and former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Hashim Thaci’s Democratic Party of Kosovo (DPK) is on course to be the largest party in the country’s 120-seat National Assembly.

While full results have yet to be confirmed, several early observations about the elections can be made:

The conduct of the elections failed to reach acceptable democratic standards

On Monday, the European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton and Commissioner for Enlargement Štefan Füle issued a statement “congratulating the people of Kosovo on their election and the calm and orderly manner in which the majority of the voting took place” and praised the “Central Electoral Commission in particular” for their role in the process.

While they are correct that the conduct of the elections was peaceful in the areas in which participation took place (the Serb minority in the north of the country boycotted the poll), to suggest the Central Election Commission should be congratulated for their role in the process is misguided to say the last.
Complaints have already been filed regarding the conduct of the elections in the Central Kosovo region of Drenica, a stronghold of Hashim Thaci’s DPK.  At one polling station at a school in Skënderaj, ballot boxes were rumoured to contain more ballot papers than the number of voters registered to cast their votes there.  Another reported a turnout of 149% while many others in the region reported turnouts of 94% despite turnout having yet to reach 50% at 3:30pm.

Isa Mustafa, the leader of the centre-right Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) which came in second to Thaci’s party has described the returns from Drenica as “statistically impossible and politically unacceptable".  I’m strongly inclined to agree with him.

Hashim Thaci took a gamble – and it appears he won

Back in September, Kosovo’s Constitutional Court ruled that President Fatmir Sejdiu was not able to hold the position of leader of the LDK and head of state.  As such, he was faced with two options: resign as President to lead his party or resign as leader of his party to remain as President.  In choosing the former, Sejdiu calculated that he may soon be able to translate his popularity as the ceremonial President into a victory at the next general election which would see him become Prime Minster. 

Daniel Hamilton: Britain must do more to support Taiwan's thriving, liberal democracy

 By Daniel Hamilton

In the lexicon of states with limited diplomatic recognition, Taiwan is unique.  While most are marked by poverty and political instability, the inhabitants of the island enjoy a level of economic prosperity and quality of life that easily rivals that in Western Europe.

Eighty miles of water is all that divides Taiwan’s twenty-three million people from mainland China.  The political distance between the two entities, however, is akin to that between the Earth and Mars. 

On one side of the ocean straight lie a people who enjoy freedom of speech, movement, religion, thought and association.  On the other, a more than a billion people still toil under the very worst kind of communist oppression; their political and civil rights severely curtailed by an all-powerful government.

Since the United Nations voted in 1971 to expel Taiwanese representatives from the Chinese seat on the Security Council, the island has endured a the gut-wrenching spectacle of watching country after country severe diplomatic links with Taipei in favour of the communist regime in Beijing.  Today, only twenty three states recognise Taiwan of which Guatemala and the Dominican Republic are the most notable. 

It’s very easy, when you’ve grown up in a democratic country such as ours, to fail to fully appreciate just how special freedom is.   After all, less than a third of the world’s people enjoy the same freedoms we do.  When we go to bed tonight, 1.33 billion people in China will still be unable to participate in multi-party elections, offending the “Dear Leader” will still be a crime punishable by a decade of hard labour in North Korea and the people of Venezuela will still be powerless to halt their country’s slide into authoritarianism.  

As such, I was proud to last week have the opportunity to visit Taiwan to learn more about the island which has operated in a bizarre form of diplomatic limbo since 1949.