Human Rights

The hon. Gentleman makes a very powerful point. That leads me to the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham), who speaks for Her Majesty’s Opposition on this issue and who is concerned that the Human Rights Act 1998 has been undermining the criminal law. In particular, he talked about the Assets Recovery Agency and complained that it was challenged in court when it attempted to seize the assets of criminals. I am afraid that when the hon. Gentleman argues in that way, he is really arguing against due process and I have to tell him that it is far better—particularly if these challenges are, as he heavily implied, absolutely without merit—if the challenge is made here, where it can be done relatively quickly and relatively cheaply and there can be an outcome. That is preferable to going to Strasbourg, which is what would have to happen if, as he wishes, we did not have the Human Rights Act. Indeed, with great respect to the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk, he seemed completely unable to grasp that what will always remain is the European convention on human rights. He, unlike some of his colleagues, has no intention of leaving it behind, but it is impossible to introduce a Bill of Rights that will oust it. The hon. Gentleman talked about the margin of appreciation as if it would somehow emerge if there were a British Bill of Rights. Marginal appreciation, of course, already exists now and it means a tolerance in respect of local circumstances if they are likely to be better known to the national decision maker on the detail of each individual case. It would not permit the European Court to tolerate alternative Bills of Rights, which are bound to be in conflict with or different from the convention. There would no point in having a different Bill of Rights if it were not different from the convention. The hon. Gentleman’s point, I assume, is for it be different in some magical way; but despite my direct question, he could not tell me what would be in it. Obviously, it is going to be different from what we have now, so it is obviously going to be different from the convention rights. What would happen, of course, is the opposite of what he said. We would not recover total supremacy for law to the House of Commons; on the contrary, the only point of having a British Bill of Rights would be if it were entrenched here; otherwise, it would have no effect. That means that we would lose parliamentary sovereignty and the supremacy of the elected House of Commons. On questions of rights, the ultimate arbiters would be the judiciary and future Parliaments might be unable to act to protect national security. The present Human Rights Act avoids that. It allows Acts of Parliament to become law even if they are not compatible with the European convention. The second difficulty is the uncertainty and confusion that would result from having two sets of fundamental rights. On the one hand, the Government would remain obliged to comply with the European convention rights and the citizen would be able to take a case to Strasbourg; on the other hand, Government, citizens and courts would be confronted by a separate, but presumably overlapping, set of rights for the purposes of domestic law. Much criticism of bureaucrats has been made, but I cannot think of a better recipe for confusion than having several layers of different rights. Decision makers would have to bear in mind two sets of rights, so they would inevitably become more risk-averse. Our task is to empower through this legislation; how on earth would the decision makers cope with such a lot of overlapping rights? To be quite frank, there has been a lot of guff talked tonight from the Opposition Benches. It makes it absolutely critical that our campaign should be a success, that it should start soon and that it should be driven forward. We must disclose to Opposition Members the common sense that is an inherent part of this legislation, which they are clearly totally missing. I am proud to be a member of the Government, even though only a lance corporal, who brought home these rights. I am determined, with my fellow Ministers, to encourage these rights into our culture. I look forward very strongly to the advent of the commission on equalities and human rights. It is a rather chancy, patchy way to entrench rights to have a Department pushing them, when they are essentially forwarded through the courts. It will be much better when we have a commission that can drive them forward, so that they become part of our core, mainstream values and part of the way that public authorities deal with all our citizens all of the time. The alternative is the Cameron Bill of Rights, which was referred to by a most distinguished journalist, whom I do not always agree with, but I do on this occasion—