It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Betts. I congratulate all who have spoken so eloquently today and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing the debate and bringing the matter before the House before the summer recess.
I am going to take an unusual course by endeavouring not to take my full 10 minutes. I will do that because the official Opposition’s position is clear, so I would simply be restating it, whereas the Government’s position is unclear and I am sure that the Minister will want the maximum time to be able to elucidate it.
When I was responding to the debate on the Gracious Speech, I made it clear that we will resist any attempt to undermine or repeal the Human Rights Act, or to detach this country from the European convention. More importantly, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) made a detailed speech on the subject on 16 June, in which she said:
“The Government has signalled that they want to fundamentally undermine the Human Rights Act. This is what lies behind the announcement in the Queen’s Speech that they would be consulting on a ‘British Bill of Rights’. We think that even the consultation is the start of a slippery slope… I give you my assurance that we are going to be clear with the Prime Minister that he must not go ahead with this. I’ve today written to the Prime Minister demanding that he drops these plans and… Their policy is intellectually incoherent and, worse, it’s wrong in principle.”
It would be at best otiose and at worst lèse majesté for me to amplify or qualify what the leader of the party has said.
The real question for the debate is: what are the Government’s intentions and what is the process to get us there? That is particularly important given the contradictory signals coming from the Government almost daily. Days before the Gracious Speech, the repeal of the Human Rights Act was being presaged as one of the centrepieces of the Queen’s Speech, only to be dropped entirely from the first Session’s legislation. We are now promised a consultation—perhaps the Minister will enlighten us as to what form it will take or when it will take place. Will the Minister also publish some of the drafts—I think we are up to about 10 or 14—of the Bill that was being prepared under the coalition Government in private by Martin Howe QC and others on behalf of the Conservative party? Presumably that document will now become a Government one.
The key issue has to be the relationship between the Human Rights Act and the European convention. I will correct, or at least qualify, one thing that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said. He said he hoped that Government policy was not the same as it was last October. I wondered that, so on 4 June I asked that question specifically of the Leader of the House of Commons—he was the person who produced the original documentation. He responded:
“The Conservative party’s policy on human rights has not changed since last October.”—[Official Report, 4 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 784.]
For those who have not read the document recently, it states something that will no doubt please the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) about the Council of Europe accepting UK demands:
“In the event that we are unable to reach that agreement, the UK would be left with no alternative but to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, at the point at which our Bill comes into effect.”
Is that now Government policy? It is not inconsistent, for example, with what the Home Secretary said two years ago, although it appeared to be inconsistent with
what the Prime Minister was saying. According to press reports, the Prime Minister was somewhat “at odds” with the Home Secretary and the then Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). Now, however, there appears to be some agreement at the top of the Conservative party and the Government that we will at least countenance withdrawal from the European convention, but it is confusing.
The Minister here today gave this response in Justice Questions last week:
“We will legislate for a Bill of Rights to protect our fundamental rights… Our plans do not involve us leaving the convention; that is not our objective”—
only for the sentence to continue—
“but our No. 1 priority is to restore some balance to our human rights laws, so no option is off the table for the future.”—[Official Report, 23 June 2015; Vol. 597, c. 748.]
What is the situation? Within an hour of that reply, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice was on the “World at One” on the BBC saying that it was perfectly possible that we would be withdrawing from the European convention.
I endeavoured to find some record of what the Justice Secretary might have said before coming into his post. This is what I found, from when the convention was incorporated in 2000. I do not know if his views have changed, but interestingly it was written in the context of the devolved settlement in Northern Ireland:
“The Human Rights culture is already spreading in our society, uprooting conventions on which our stability has rested… It supplants common sense and common law, and erodes individual dignity by encouraging citizens to see themselves as supplicants and victims to be pensioned by the state.”
That does not sound like a strong endorsement of human rights, but perhaps the Minister will be able to elucidate in his response.
There are very difficult problems and hurdles. With all due respect to the Chair of the Justice Select Committee, the matters we are discussing are not “theological” ones. Our relationship with supranational law will become an issue if we produce some British Bill of Rights that is the bespoke device of the Justice Secretary and the Minister. Unless they are intending to withdraw from all international treaties and conventions and indeed from the European Court of Justice, whose judgments are far more prescriptive and binding than those of the Strasbourg Court, inevitably there will be two systems running in parallel, a British one and an international one, to both of which our courts will have to pay attention.
The Minister must address the issues raised by the Front-Bench spokesperson for the Scottish National party, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), about the devolved Administrations. He must also address some practical problems, such as how he will get his own colleagues and the House of Lords on board and how—perhaps the central point to have come out of today’s debate—he will explain why any of it is necessary in the first place.
The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) has said that most of the problems that have arisen with the European Court of Human Rights over a period of time are in the process of being, or have been, resolved.