European Convention on Human Rights

Lord Prescott Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prescott]

My Lords, I congratulate my friend of many years, my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine, on the presentation that he has made today and on the call for these papers on human rights to be brought forward. There could not be a more appropriate time than now to raise this particular issue. The role of human rights and the protection of private interest and public interest, as embodied in the European Convention on Human rights, were not challenged for a number of years but that has not been the case over the past five years. Clearly there is a fundamental challenge under way. The Minister of Justice in the other place has now admitted that the Government are looking at how they might change human rights legislation. We will have the presidency under the Council of Europe perhaps to do some of that. We look forward to the debate and the conclusions of the Government.

I should perhaps declare an interest, as the leader of the Labour group in the Council of Europe, leading a delegation from these two Houses. We have been concerned about the reforms that are necessary in human rights legislation. We made recommendations 10 years ago about the length of time taken for cases and about other matters. There is a need for reform, as has been said in this House on a number of occasions. However, I say to my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine that our debates in 1997 which he led in this House made a compromise that has not helped the situation. I refer to the role of the press complaints body that deals with some of the obligations of the press in observing public and private interests. We made a rod for our backs by not making public bodies accountable regarding the Council of Europe and human rights obligations. We exempted the Press Complaints Commission from that. If we did not have a body that claimed the right to be self-regulatory, we would be able to bring standards and provide advice to editors when dealing with these cases. The point that I want to make today is that in referring newspapers to another body for further discussion, the role of the Press Complaints Commission should be considered.

I attended the other place when it discussed the right of prisoners to vote. That was not a simple issue, and the Government recognised that the House should decide on whether there should be a vote for everyone or whether there should be an area of discretion or appreciation. We can decide on whether the right should be limited depending on how long a person is in prison and the offences involved. The House was not denied the opportunity to make that decision—and many other Parliaments have done that. Only three have said that they are not prepared to accept the ruling. However, the issue behind the debate in the Commons was about getting out of Europe. Those who wanted that did not distinguish between the Council of Europe or the European Union. They wanted to get out of those bodies. They said that Parliament should be the supreme body for legislation. They were same people who voted for us to join the European Union—and I voted against it in 1972. What gives them the right to override the supremacy of those bodies? The Lisbon treaty again makes that clear. We recognise that that is something that already happens to our legislation. The debate was really about how you get out.

I also heard during that debate that judges are ignorant, they are from foreign countries, and they are not elected. I have to say that I am one of the people who elected the judges to the European court. I do not know what the press will make of that, but nevertheless we were involved in exercising that democratic right through our delegation.

The other example was the Max Moseley case, in which our courts—our courts—under our legislation actually said that there was a breach of privacy that was relevant, if you like, to Articles 8 and 10 of the Council of Europe convention, and found a balance in that. Moseley went to the Europe court to seek a ruling on notification—that a person should be told in advance of publication. When I hear the Press Complaints Commission saying that we have a right to notification, we all know what that means. There is a call at 5 pm on a Saturday night saying, “We’ve got this story. Do you want to comment?”. They do not give you notification, and if you can afford to sue them, they do not give you notification, because they know you might go to the court. That is precisely what Moseley did. I can see what is involved in all this talk about rich people getting that right, but an awful lot of people cannot afford it. Why? It is because the press is made up of powerful rich bodies that prevent you taking any action under our legal system.

It is interesting to note that our press praised the common sense of the judges who rejected Moseley’s application for notification, but they condemned the same judges over the issue of prisoners. All of a sudden, those judges became well informed and wise. Frankly, that is all we can expect from our press. I am not a fan. Even the recent super-injunctions are sought under our law, not the European court’s law. I will not go into those arguments. I can see why people are getting increasingly concerned about them. I must say that I am not excited by the idea that some footballer can say, “Publication might affect my sponsorship money”. That is not about human rights; it is about commercial interests, which is the motivation of most of these injunctions. So there is this kind of anti-European dimension, which is not at all helpful.

I come to the point that I really wanted to make in this debate. I think we agree that Articles 8 and 10, which identify these rights, are rights in our constitution and in the European legislation. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffmann, pointed out in a debate in this House on defamation, the American system provides no rights for people or celebrities. There is just media freedom. That is what the press here is after. There is a clash between what we might call the European tradition and the American tradition. The American tradition hands over the freedom to the press. We have to decide here whether we have in legislation protection for individuals or a balance between the public interest and freedom of speech and indeed freedom of the individual. We will do that in legislation and we will do it in the consultation. However, I am worried about the Press Complaints Commission believing that somehow it can rule on that. In many cases the PCC ignored the Information Commissioner, who said that thousands of pieces of information were being obtained illegally and that thousands of pounds were being paid by hundreds of journalists. The PCC did nothing about it. It totally ignored that in the hacking inquiry. The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee said that the inquiry was “simplistic”. It did nothing other than mouth the arguments of the press. Indeed, the chair of the PCC was found for a libellous statement in that very case. It is not very good for the chair to be accused of putting out unfair information.

Therefore, we need to look at the Press Complaints Commission. It was left out of the legislation but I hope that it will be covered by it. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffmann, tried to seek out the essential issues, as did the noble Lord, Lord Lester, in his Defamation Bill. We should ensure that this whole matter is covered by legislation. I am not necessarily talking about statutory control but about the need for a body which is independent, accountable and answerable and which is concerned about the private individual, not just the editors who control them on their editorial board.