Human Rights

The alternative is that, instead of having 3,000 new offences, we will multiply that by a factor of 10; we will have an entire Lobbyful of new statutes from the Government. Of course there must be universal principles. What is wrong with universal principles of human rights? Do we not all subscribe to them? Are they not principles that we hold dear and that we want our law to be in accordance with? Of course they are, and that is what the Human Rights Act did. It caused no problems between 1950 and 1998, so why has it caused so many problems between 1998 and 2006? The answer to that is because of ill-informed and incompetent administration. I am puzzled and confused by the Conservatives’ position on this issue. They say that they want to introduce a modern British Bill of Rights and by implication—or, rather, explicitly—they wish to repeal the Human Rights Act. That is the Conservative position. Setting aside that that appears to be a bit of a back-of-an-envelope policy devised by the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), I notice that at the time when it was released he had not consulted his party colleague, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who was supposed to be leading a study group on the constitution and who described the proposals as ““xenophobic and legal nonsense””. That might commend them to the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash); that might be the settling argument so far as he is concerned. Setting that aside, I really do want to understand what the Conservatives are talking about. Apparently—I think that the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk said this—they do not intend to withdraw from the European convention on human rights. So every single provision and article of the convention would still be law in this country, and would still be applicable to any British citizen through application to the court in Strasbourg. Of course, were the Conservatives to change their mind and to withdraw from the convention, that would mean that we would also withdraw from the European Union. Again, that is an argument that would commend itself to the hon. Member for Stone and to some others, but as I understand it, that is not the Conservative party’s position.