Sex Offenders Register

Debate between Baroness Neville-Jones and Lord Prescott

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

Indeed, and we are saying that it is the correct moment to reassert the constitutional principle.

[Lord Prescott]

There is no doubt, as has just been said, that it is Parliament’s right to make the laws and the courts’ to interpret them. However, what worries me most of all, as with the Statement in the other place regarding prisoners, is the difficult issue about private and personal rights and about freedoms. In our Human Rights Act, that is a balance between Article 8 and Article 10 as well as other articles. That is to be interpreted by the courts—in this case, our Supreme Court. Presumably they will not be saying similar things about the judges in this particular case as they said about the Council of Europe.

If a new bill of rights is to be considered, presumably that balance between the public and private interest has to be established. Who will determine what that balance is? Will it be the Government, reacting to the publicity about certain unpopular cases? Or will we leave it to the judges to make their decisions, and, if we disagree, change the law? At the moment the Government seem to be running before the publicity, and then, as with the prisoners’ case, saying, “We back the Court of Human Rights”. That is the judgment we are facing today. I worry about the attitude of this Government in respect of personal rights.