European Convention on Human Rights

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to encourage compliance with the Convention on Human Rights (1) in the United Kingdom, and (2) across Europe.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are fully committed to abiding by their obligations under the convention, in line with the Brighton declaration of 2012, agreed under the UK’s chairmanship of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers. We will continue to lead efforts to ensure the effective implementation of the convention by all state parties, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity and the margin of appreciation afforded to them under that declaration.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister to his very well-deserved new role.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, Hear!

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

I thank him for his Answer, but I am afraid what Amnesty International has called the “rights removal Bill”, which was published yesterday, tells a rather different story. Its provisions drastically dilute the positive obligations on the police to protect the public from sexual and violent crimes, and it attempts to break the vital link between our domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. How can Ministers get on aeroplanes to talk about human rights elsewhere in the world while promoting such a hatchet job at home?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I thank the House for its welcome. As the House knows, this afternoon we have an Oral Statement during which we can go into some of these questions in more detail. If I may at this stage confine myself to general terms, the Government’s view is that this Bill will strengthen our human rights framework in this country, in particular—and these are the key words I would like to introduce—by introducing a better balance in the human rights framework, a better balance between the judiciary and the legislature, a better balance between UK judges and Strasbourg, and a better balance between rights and obligations. We stay in the convention; the rights in the convention are still there in UK statute; but we seek to rebalance and clarify, in the words of the Act, and thereby restore public confidence in our human rights framework.