Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Debate between Bob Stewart and Michael Connarty

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

It is a genuine pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), who made a considered and reasonable contribution in a mellow way. It is right to say that the royal charter is not a solution to all the problems that occurred in the past, and that it is possibly not a solution for the future if malevolent forces out there wish to break the law and the arrangements in the charter.

I welcome the Leveson-compliant solution—that is the key: it is Leveson-compliant. I did not take part in the earlier debate, although I listened to all the contributions in what one of my constituents phoned to say was a bit of a love-in in the House of Commons, given the amount of self-congratulation across the Chamber. Let us be frank—I am a very frank person as you know, Mr Speaker: my constituents and the general public know that the Government, the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State were cajoled, bullied and harassed into solving the problem with a Leveson-compliant solution. Let us not avoid that. If MPs had not been present in large enough numbers to vote the Government down, there was no possibility that the weak proposal put forward by the Prime Minister would have been amended to what we have now. That must be said so that people know the truth.

I heard the atrocious comments on the radio this morning by the person I now consider to be not the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, but the Minister for spin, about dragging the Labour party along and defending the press from the terrible things that the Labour party was going to do through statute. In fact, however, what those on the Labour and Liberal Democrat Front Benches, including the Deputy Prime Minister, sought all along was a Leveson-compliant solution, and that is what we have.

I am worried about the Minister’s approach to the amendments in her speech. She was either incentivising publishers and publications to join up to the charter—I thought that was done in a better and more balanced way by the deputy leader of the Opposition—or it sounded to me that she was trying to assure publishers and publications that if they sign up to the arrangement as amended, they will not find it much more demanding of their own self-discipline than under the discredited Press Complaints Commission. People should read her speech in some detail because lots of signals were put out that I believe were wrong.

This is an opportunity for the press to right the wrongs of the past by signing up to self-discipline through this form of charter. If, however, the system is not more demanding or effective than the Press Complaints Commission, the first time the press create another victim of a new abuse, perhaps of a different sort, Parliament will be brought into serious disrepute. That is what the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Prime Minister were trying to avoid by putting together a measure that is Leveson-compliant.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I very much hope that the charter will act as a catalyst for good behaviour, as well as everything else. My children were doorstepped in their school when I was in Bosnia and not a public figure, and my mother had her door pushed in and photographs were taken. I hope that the press will try to regulate itself and stop such things so that they never happen and the press never have to come before any regulator.

[Michael Connarty]

I normally lean on the optimistic side—the sun rises every morning; I am glad I am still alive and my heart is still beating. That is two-up for me and I am happy to go on with the day with a positive view. Recently, however, some of my constituents were in Algeria, one of whom was a captive and in the trucks that were bombed. He managed to run away but he had bombs hanging round his neck as he did so. The press insisted on trying to get to that person’s home. I must pay a compliment to MSP colleagues in my constituency, who both happen to be SNP. We agreed that we would not talk to the press or the media, and that we would not give out the names of the people involved. The press still found a way to the family home and tried to get into the house to interview the young people involved, one of whom was still very traumatised by their experience. The press therefore still have a form of approach to the public whereby they see them as another byline without thinking about the consequences of what they do. The charter might help with that. It might not help, as the hon. and learned Member for Harborough said, but I hope it does.

Council of Europe (UK Chairmanship)

Debate between Bob Stewart and Michael Connarty

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Connarty]

We came in together, and hopefully they will carry us out together. I recall that we also came to the House in the same year.

It is absolutely incredible that a court as important as the Court of Human Rights is clogged up by a type of bureaucracy that could not be imagined in the most disorganised country in the world. The simplest cases that will clearly never be correctly allocated to the Court have to be judged by a full bench of judges before they can say, “No, we can’t deal with this.” There is no sifting process and no filter process. No Committee in this House would run if every Member had to gather every day, look at every paper proposed, and come before the Committee to decide whether it could even discuss it. That is what the Court is about at the moment. Anything we can do under our chairmanship to bring in a filtering system whereby one judge or some other method is used to say, “This is still correct to stay on the list and others must be sent back to the courts of the national jurisdictions or rejected”, is long overdue.

I will talk later about the Human Rights Act 1998 in the context of individual countries. It is a myth that the Court can make a country implement its judgment just by lifting the judgment made in the Court and transposing it into the Acts of Parliament of this country. It is not the European Union, after all. I see that the Minister for Europe is here, and he recognises that that can happen with European Union regulations and all the other things that come in, and we have to just get on with it because we have signed away some of those rights—but not at Council of Europe level. It has to come back and be looked at by this sovereign Parliament, which then makes a judgment on what amendments to make that would implement it. I hope that we never move away from that.

There is lots of talk saying that our Human Rights Act is somehow a transcription of the convention on human rights and the judgments of the courts. I hope that it is, in fact, an attempt by this sovereign Parliament to implement the human rights that we all hold so dear for our country and for every other country. If it is not correct and needs to be amended in some way, that is our right as a sovereign Parliament, but we must not get into the situation where we can overturn the human rights that are available to people in Council of Europe countries just because we believe that it will satisfy the feelings of our constituents.

I held a very excellent debate about human rights and family rights. On family rights, yes, there is no doubt that people are angry because that is used as a plea for someone not to be sent back to some other country. But when we come down to the fundamentals and someone is asked, “Do you think that family rights are due to all of us?”, most people would say yes. We then have to decide why it is not applicable to someone who may come from another country. Sometimes, if we throw out that basic judgment that family rights are available to all of us, and must therefore be available to anyone under our jurisdiction, we destroy something very important in what we have fought for, for political gain and for a feeling of anger rather than for a judgment of what is correct.

[Bob Stewart]

I have a question because I am slightly ignorant on the procedures. If a judgment came back to this House and this House decided that it would not accept it, where do we stand then?

[Michael Connarty]

That is a very important question. If the Government should bring back a proposal on, for example, whether prisoners in custody should have voting rights, and we decided that we did not wish to accept it, we could reject it. They would have to come back again to try to put another proposal, and I presume negotiations would go on between the Committee of Ministers, particularly with our chairmanship in the next six months, to find something that would be suitable, and that would be correct. However, I believe—this is my own judgment—that if we got to the point where we said, “No, we refuse to implement this”, then there must be some question about whether we want to remain in the Council of Europe at all.