European Union (Amendment) Bill

It is very simple: when I was shadow Attorney-General, I proposed the repeal of the 1998 Act. I am glad to be able to say that that is now my party's policy, and I trust that it will remain so. I shall go further and say that I have the gravest reservations about how the ECHR has impinged on the essential question. I would fight to the death to defend the rights themselves—and my own father died for that cause in the last war—and the proposition that decisions about the rights enjoyed by people in this country should be made by this Parliament. However, I would also fight to the death to ensure that they are not made in the abstract, according to principles put forward and adjudicated by an unelected European Court of Justice.