Human Rights Act 1998 (Repeal and Substitution) Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Friday 1st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is one of the key reasons why the majority of people in this country would support the Bill.

We have not heard from the Opposition or our friends in the Liberal Democrat party. Perhaps they have been convinced by the strength of the arguments this morning, but they may well oppose the Bill. However, I find that supporters of all political parties support what my hon. Friend’s Bill seeks to do. It is not a party political issue among ordinary voters. They are all equally outraged at some of the cases that have hit the headlines in recent years. I agree with my hon. Friend that people see the Human Rights Act as something that diverts their hard-earned taxpayers’ funds away from the things that they should be spent on, such as providing more doctors and nurses, to paying lawyers to bring forward spurious cases.

Perhaps I could refer the House to one such case. Samuel Betteridge was a young man who raped a 14-year-old girl after luring her to his flat and forcing her to drink alcohol. In 2005 he admitted at Lincoln Crown court two counts of rape and one of attempted rape. His minimum jail term of five years was later reduced on appeal to three and a half years. His parole hearing was fixed for May 2009 but later postponed until January 2010.

Through his lawyers, Mr Betteridge appealed to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that the delay in his parole hearing violated article 5 of the European convention on human rights—the right to a speedy hearing. The Strasbourg judges, needless to say, agreed with Mr Betteridge’s submission and found in his favour. They said that

“the delay in reviewing Mr Betteridge’s case was the direct result of the failure of the authorities to anticipate the demand which would be placed on the prison system following the introduction of IPP sentencing”.

Those are indeterminate public protection sentences which, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) and other hon. Members know, are now being abolished—[Interruption.] Yes, changed; effectively abolished, perhaps.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I will address the hon. Gentleman’s request for the Opposition’s views on the issue under discussion, but IPPs are being abolished, which Opposition Members think is something of a shame. The issues of public protection that the hon. Gentleman mentions, and the balance between the offender and the victim, are being changed not for better but for worse.

[Mr Nuttall]

If my memory serves me rightly, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) I took a similar view on that matter and— I think—went into the Division Lobby to try to avoid it happening. There is a place for such sentences but I do not want to be drawn down that avenue. This debate is not about sentencing policy, but that was the subject of the case I mentioned and it is therefore right at least to touch on how it came about.

The High Court in London originally dismissed the case, but the European Court of Human Rights backed Mr Betteridge and awarded the rapist £640 in damages plus £1,710 in legal fees—I bet that did not go far towards paying those fees. According to my information, Mr Betteridge was apparently not alone in receiving payments for delayed parole hearings and was one of 100 prisoners who has received in total more than £313,000 over the past three years as a result of an alleged breach, found to be an actual breach, of their human rights. Most of our constituents would agree with Robert Oxley of the TaxPayers Alliance who said:

“It’s disgusting that taxpayers are being made to pay for an award to a rapist thanks to European Court meddling.”

Of course, he was referring to the European Court of Human Rights, not the European Court of Justice.

As the House is aware, that was not the only case to hit the headlines. A case with an even more substantial effect, certainly on proceedings in this place, was that of Hirst, which was, in effect, the leading case on prisoner voting rights. In 1979, John Hirst used an axe to kill his landlady in her own home. In the following year he was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and sentenced to life imprisonment with a tariff of 15 years, after which he could be released on licence. In fact, he was not released until May 2004 because of concerns that he might present a danger to the public; for example, he was found guilty of an offence under prison rules when, in 1998, he slammed a van door against a female prisoner officer.

Mr Hirst used his time in prison to teach himself law. He became a student of human rights legislation and a serial litigant against the authorities. There is no time this morning to go into his various cases, but suffice it to say that in one of them the court ordered that the Government pay Hirst £1,000 in damages and a further £7,500 in costs. That was before what we might call his cause célèbre—Hirst v. United Kingdom (No. 2)—which was to prove far more controversial, and related to whether his human rights had been violated because he was not able to vote while he was in prison.

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[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and to agree with him on the matter of IPPs—but not, I suspect, much else. We seem to be in the one-hour club, as we are averaging about an hour for each contribution. As someone who regularly exceeds that time in Committee—I get some criticism from the Whips on both sides when I do—it is nice to be among friends in that respect at least on a Friday morning. I am not, however, going to speak for more than an hour today, as I want to leave time for the Minister to respond and perhaps for us to move on to other business.

I do not think that, even if I wanted to, I could match the eloquence of some of the speeches that we have heard, particularly that of the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and his exchanges with the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). The hon. Member for Penrith and The Border made a compelling case on many issues, not least on minority rights. Human rights legislation is about individual rights, and it is often about minority rights and unpopular minority rights. That issue has not been much addressed in contributions today other than by the hon. Gentleman.

I hope that the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who has produced a very impressive Bill, will forgive me, or will not misunderstand me, when I say that during his speech I thought that my article 3 rights might be affected—not, of course, because of his argument or his oratory, but because I felt that we had been here before. We have, in fact, been here before, as recently as last December, when the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) presented a ten-minute rule Bill that proposed the abolition, or repeal, of the Human Rights Act. It was defeated by, I believe, 196 votes to 72. Although the debate was short, the arguments that were advanced were very similar to those that have been advanced today.

I mention that occasion—it was not the only occasion on which the House has discussed these matters—because I suspect that, notwithstanding the considerable effort that has gone into this Bill, it was born of frustration rather than a belief that it would ever reach the statute book. Under the coalition Government, there have been two consultations and a commission report. I think it is accepted on all sides that the resolution of the issue that the commission was set to consider is going nowhere, certainly during the current Parliament. That is clearly frustrating for some Conservative Members, but perhaps it is not surprising, given that in their respective manifestos one of the coalition parties promised to replace the Human Rights Act and the other promised to protect it. That is one of the clearest contradictions between the two parties. I am sorry if we are not going to hear from the Liberal Democrats today, perhaps for reasons connected with hangovers.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I want to correct that statement, and also to reassure the hon. Gentleman of the Liberal Democrats’ support for the Human Rights Act. Let me point out to him that there is not a contradiction, but simply a disagreement between the coalition parties. That happens sometimes in coalitions, and he ought to welcome it.

[Mr Slaughter]

It may be a distinction without a difference; I do not know. The point is that, as was made pretty clear by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke)—the former Lord Chancellor and now Minister without Portfolio—when he was asked to pronounce on the subject, nothing will happen during the current Parliament. He is a supporter of the Human Rights Act. Indeed, as we have heard today, as we have heard from the Attorney-General and, for all I know, as we shall hear from the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, there are some fairly strong supporters of the Act in the Conservative party.

I believe—this may account for the rather sparse attendance of members of all parties today, apart from the four who have spoken so eloquently—that the issue will not be resolved by any method other than the continuation of the current Act, perhaps with additions or amendments. Nothing is perfect, particularly in this field. I do not think this will be resolved unless we have a majority Conservative Government, and, judging by the declaration of the returning officer in Eastleigh at 2.45 this morning, I think that that is an increasingly remote possibility in the foreseeable future.

I am not going to recite our reasons for enacting the human rights legislation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) said two months ago in response to the hon. Member for South Norfolk, we were and remain very proud of it, but, as several Members have pointed out today, it came about as a result of an historical process, and one which had support from all parties.

I think it fair to say that it was under Labour Governments that the principal advances were made, albeit with the support and encouragement of senior members of the Conservative party—none more senior than Winston Churchill, who, as early as 1943, proposed the foundation of the Council of Europe, and none more so than David Maxwell Fyfe, who was in large part the drafter of the convention. Although it came into effect in 1950, it was not until the late 1960s that British citizens had the right to go to the European Court, and not until the enactment of the Human Rights Act that human rights issues could be adjudicated in the British courts. All of that seems to me to be sensible progress, undertaken in a considered way that even, perhaps, the hon. Member for North East Somerset would approve of, as it took us some 40 or 50 years to decide how to address human rights. This has not been rushed into; it has been considered over a long period.

The whole purpose of the convention’s incorporation into English law is to give direct access to British judges and British courts, rather than matters having to be dealt with in Strasbourg. In fact, only about 10 judgments a year now come from Strasbourg. We intended that British citizens should be able to bring human rights cases to British courts in front of British judges, and I think we achieved that in the Human Rights Act. The Act enshrined in domestic law most of the rights contained in the convention, and it also included two additional clauses to underline the importance of freedom of conscience and religion and a free press.

The Act was deliberately crafted to ensure British courts were not merely an echo chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. It took the rights of the convention but allowed our judges to interpret them as they saw fit, meaning that while UK courts have to take account of Strasbourg case law on cases relating to a convention right, they do not have to incorporate it and can depart from it where appropriate. That was made explicit by the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, when he said domestic courts must be allowed “flexibility and discretion” in developing human rights law, which is precisely what the Human Rights Act gives.

It is for those reasons that we find it perplexing that Government Members find incorporation of the convention and having a British Human Rights Act to be less acceptable than the previous situation. As has been said, there are absolute rights, limited rights and qualified rights. Crucially, the Human Rights Act maintains parliamentary sovereignty and the supremacy of Parliament as the only law-making authority. If a British court finds that our legislation does not comply with the Human Rights Act, it cannot use the Act to force Parliament to change the law. Instead it will issue what is known as a declaration of incompatibility, and it will then be up to Parliament and Parliament alone to decide the best way to respond. It may choose not to respond at all. There are sufficient safeguards in respect of the margin of appreciation and other measures to permit the Act to function in the organic way intended.

It is true that there are problems with the exercise of jurisdiction by the European Court of Human Rights, and that it is an unwieldy body with a huge backlog of cases. Those matters can be addressed, however, but none of them is sufficient of itself for us to choose to opt out, which no other country apart from Belarus would contemplate. It would be damaging to both UK jurisdiction and our reputation abroad.

We hear many stories—often apocryphal, exaggerated or only partly told—about the deleterious effects of the Human Rights Act. In reality, however, it has empowered many individual citizens and vulnerable people in respect of domestic violence, disability, mental health, age discrimination, sexual orientation, religious discrimination, maintaining a private life and maintaining the right to protest. There have been landmark cases in all those areas. I will not go through them case by case, as they are a matter of public record. It remains the fact that this is a valuable addition to English law. It is not an alien creature. It is an important check on Executive and state power in the interests of the individual, and, frankly, it is worrying that this Government wish to attack the Human Rights Act, especially when considered alongside other steps they are taking to restrict legal aid and access to justice.

On Monday, the House will debate the Justice and Security Bill, which is another attempt to hide away, in an excessive way, public scrutiny and the right to fair and equal access to justice in this country. We should be looking for ways to expand and extend the rights of individual citizens, and that is exactly what the Human Rights Act did. As I said, Labour Members are extremely proud of that legislation. We do not say that it cannot be improved, but we do say it is wrong-headed and misconceived to think that by repealing the Act and trying to invent something in a unique way, separate from that which has been established, primarily through the agency of British lawyers and British politicians, over a period of 60 years, we are going to get a better deal. That is a fantasy on the part of some Government Members. They are not going to get their way in this Parliament and I hope that they will not get their way in any future Parliament. I hope that the Minister will confirm that it is the Government’s intention not to legislate in this Parliament in the way that has been indicated, be it through a private Member’s Bill or in any other way.