Human Rights Act
Debate between Clive Betts and Neil Carmichael(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Neil Carmichael
My way at looking at things in terms of English law is that I prefer to assume that I have a right unless Parliament has told me that I do not. That is how we should be operating.
Doing something different from what we have done in the past also has international implications. As we have already heard, the architect of the European Court of Human Rights was a former Conservative Home Secretary who was not a libertarian in the true sense of the word. Leaving the Court would be to depart from that tradition and would risk our international reputation while making it harder still for other nations to think in terms of their own aspirations for rights, and might not discourage others in their intention not to give rights. The issue is not only legal, but one of foreign policy.
In short, we must consider the matter carefully. I would prefer to have legislation that improves what we already have, rather than undermining and changing the structure that we have become used to.
Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)
Order. Joanna Cherry, the SNP spokesperson, will now have four minutes before I call the shadow Minister and then the Minister to speak for 10 minutes each.