Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

Yes, I do understand that. The message we must all try to give is that anyone who is attracted to the idea of going to fight in Syria or Iraq must be dissuaded from doing so, partly because of the personal risk that the hon. Gentleman describes but also because the picture is exceptionally complicated, and organisations that appear to be on the side of the angels may not in fact be so. It is important that everyone understands the legal and physical risks that they are running by doing that sort of thing.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

3. What assessment he has made of the potential effect of the UK leaving the EU on the protection of human rights in the UK.

[The Attorney General (Jeremy Wright)]

The United Kingdom has a long-standing tradition of ensuring that our rights and liberties are protected domestically and of fulfilling our international human rights obligations. The decision to leave the European Union does not change that.

[Alison Thewliss]

The repeal Bill White Paper is vague in the details of the human rights protections currently afforded to us all by EU laws and regulations. Will the Attorney General instruct a full independent audit of human rights protections originating from the EU and publish the results?

[The Attorney General]

The hon. Lady will have to wait until the Bill is published, but she will then be able to study it in detail, and the House will be able to discuss it in detail. However, she will appreciate that the principle behind the Bill is that we will transfer European rules and regulations into domestic law wherever it is feasible and sensible to do so. They will become domestic law at that point, and they will be enforced and upheld by our own courts. That is a sensible way of doing it.