Bill of Rights

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I will resist the temptation to refer to a pending case. I hope noble Lords can forgive me.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

By reference to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, does the Minister remember a time when, for example, prison staff read all prisoners’ correspondence to stop them petitioning? There were a number of practices with regard to prisoners, but it was only under orders of the Strasbourg court—orders which the Home Office was happy to lose; I was arguing them—that our prison regime was brought into an acceptable state and prisoners were allowed any rights at all.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

Historically, of course, the noble and learned Lord is completely right, as one would assume. At this point, I take my ministerial hat off and put my personal hat on and take this opportunity to pay tribute to the European Court of Human Rights over the years, and indeed to the Council of Europe. In answer to my noble friend Lord Hannan, I say that the very fact of our membership and the dissemination of rights through the Council of Europe that it has enabled is a very positive element for Europe in general, in my humble, respectful and personal view. That does not mean that everything is necessarily fine, and the Government’s view is that it is time, after over 20 years of the Human Rights Act, to look at it again and do some rebalancing.