Britain should take steps to ban complicity in torture, the most senior elected official at Europe’s largest representative body said in London this week.

I don’t suppose the government was too worried. It would be cruel to say that Terry Davis is not a household name even in his own household. But, as he admitted at Chatham House on Tuesday, ‘household name’ would not be how anyone would describe the Council of Europe – even though it represents 800 million people across 47 states.

Davis, 71, served as a West Midlands Labour MP for 28 years, though he was never rewarded with ministerial office. He is almost at the end of his five-year term as secretary general of the Council of Europe, which had only 10 members when it was founded in London 60 years ago this week.

To celebrate its last big anniversary 10 years ago, the Queen gave a reception at St James’s Palace. This time, there was nothing quite so grand.

That’s because the mood was rather more upbeat in 1999. Parliament had recently passed the Human Rights Act, allowing our own judges to apply the most important of the council’s 200 or so European conventions. But the act had not yet come into force and ministers were blissfully unaware of the pitfalls ahead.

I reminded Davis that, more than five years after the European Court of Human Rights first ruled that Britain’s blanket ban on prisoners voting was unlawful, the government had still not taken steps to amend election law.

‘No doubt the government has a very heavy workload,’ he said, not trying even to persuade himself that this was the true reason.

In his speech this week, Davis was rather less diplomatic. He observed that some older European democracies appeared ‘shocked’ at any criticism by Council of Europe monitors of their records on human rights or discrimination.

That was in contrast to states such as Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine. When planning new legislation on democracy and human rights, these countries generally volunteered their drafts for assessment by Council of Europe experts.

‘True, they don’t always seek our opinion and don’t always accept our advice,’ Davis said. ‘But, on the whole, this part of our work has a very clear and measurable influence on democracy and human rights in these countries.’

What would really boost these efforts, he continued, would be for countries such as Denmark, France and the UK to let these same experts look occasionally at their own draft laws on immigration or terrorism. ‘I leave you to judge how likely this is,’ Davis said, not holding his breath.

He recalled what happened after the Council of Europe discovered that US intelligence agents had been kidnapping suspected terrorists in Europe before interrogating them in a way that was banned by the human rights convention.

‘When I proposed that governments should consider the possibility of measures which would help to make sure that such gross violations of human rights would be prevented in future, they did nothing,’ he said. ‘It has been nearly three years and we are still waiting for them to act.’

Davis sounded let down by the political party he had joined more than 40 years ago. ‘There is nothing more damaging to the cause of human rights than its most vocal advocates acting with inconsistency and double standards,’ he said accusingly.

But he is enough of a politician to know that quiet diplomacy is often more effective than feisty speeches. A little-noticed amendment to the human rights convention, due for approval by member states in Madrid next week, is likely to have more impact on people seeking to enforce their human rights than any number of grand speeches.

As I noted here last October, the European Court of Human Rights is a victim of its own success. Nearly 100,000 applications are pending, most of them ineligible or otherwise doomed to failure. But applicants must wait up to four years to hear if their case will even be considered – Lord Hoffmann pointed out in March that ‘the court has no summary mechanism for dealing with hopeless cases’. A committee of three judges is needed to declare an application inadmissible and a chamber of seven judges must sit before a case can be dismissed on its merits.

Clearly, this is a waste of resources. In 2004, the Council of Europe proposed reforms to the human rights convention aimed at using judges and staff more efficiently. Protocol 14, as it’s called, would have allowed a single judge, assisted by an official, to strike out a case. It would also have allowed a three-judge committee to grant or refuse routine claims.

Protocol 14 has been ratified in every country except Russia. Because it requires unanimity, the amendment cannot be implemented.

So a new ‘interim’ amendment has been devised. Protocol 14 bis would also reduce the number of judges needed. Unlike protocol 14, though, it does not permit a case to be thrown out merely because the applicant has ‘not suffered a significant disadvantage’.

But the big advantage of 14 bis is that it can be implemented on a state-by-state basis. Provided the protocol is approved by member states in Madrid next week, it will bind each country that accepts it. It could begin to take effect in the autumn.

Even so, its impact will be limited unless some of the worst offenders sign up. Between them, Russia, Turkey and Romania account for half the outstanding applications. Davis’s successor may need some more radical ideas.