Human Rights

It is not civilising for difficulties to be put in the way of the police. I live in a borough where, sadly, searching youngsters is necessary as they enter school, because of the terrible tragedies that have occurred; indeed, I have been with the police today. However, the issue is whether we have rights that we uphold. We have always had some rights, which, as the hon. Member for Stone said, were established by habeas corpus, but they have been inadequately defended. The case that my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) and I make is that we should never trust Executives, because they always seek to exceed their powers, but nor should we trust Parliament. Parliament is not perfect. It is not representative in gender, background, race, ethnicity, colour or political view, and it does not represent the views of the people of Britain. The Government were not elected by the majority of the people of Britain. [Interruption.] We were elected by the system that we have, but there is no reason for thinking that it gives us a perfect Parliament. We should be much more positive about ensuring that we have independent judges who are fearless and are not seeking their seats at the next election. They should be able to stand up and say that the rights to a fair trial, to freedom of association and to freedom of speech are ones that we defend. The great merit of the Government’s belated but none the less welcome decision in 1998 to bring, as the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) said, human rights home is that, instead of having to wait—instead of having to go through the magistrates court, the High Court and the Appeal Court, and then to Strasbourg—people can pray in aid their rights in this country at the first occasion. If we are to have human rights, we have to be able to argue for them in the local courts.