Bill of Rights
Debate between Lord Hannan of Kingsclere and Lord Bellamy
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, when the European convention was promulgated in 1950 and enshrined in 1953, this country already had strong and trusted laws in place that guaranteed free speech, religious pluralism, habeas corpus and so on. Will my noble and learned friend the Minister confirm that charters of this kind are not so much about the creation of new rights as about appointing a different set of people to arbitrate rights or to come and interpret between competing claims? Can he identify any specific advantages that have come to this country as a result of our adherence to the European convention?
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My noble friend is quite right that the rights in this country go back many years. I will not, as a cliché, invoke Magna Carta, but it is perfectly plain that this country has a long and proud history of freedoms—they were not called human rights then—over very many years. When the Human Rights Act 1998 was introduced, the Government of the day described it as bringing rights home. I agree with my noble friend that they never actually left in the first place.