Human Rights Act 1998 (Repeal and Substitution) Bill

Debate between Damian Green and Martin Horwood

Friday 1st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that clarification. He is right that the European Court might prove a better friend of the UK taxpayer than our courts in that regard.

That is not the only area in which it is possible to regard what comes out of the Strasbourg Court as more sensible than what emerges from our courts system. In my previous job as Minister for Immigration, I was struck that the Strasbourg Court had a more sensible test of what rights should apply when deciding whether someone should be removed from this country than was sometimes applied in our domestic courts. It may be unusual for a Minister to wish for European jurisprudence to take precedence over UK jurisprudence, but there were some cases in which I did so. My hon. Friend makes a good point about damages, but that is not a unique area in which the Court can be regarded as quite sensible.

It would be reasonable for the House to debate a number of other detailed technical issues, but I hope that over the past few minutes I have illustrated that, as one would expect, there would have to be significant scrutiny of large parts of this Bill were it to proceed further.

I wish to say a bit more about what will happen now because, as I have said, a twin-track approach is needed and we must know what will happen during the rest of this Parliament. As several hon. Members have said, the United Kingdom played a pivotal role in shaping the original human rights framework in which the rights were, literally, fundamental. Indeed, then hon. Members from across the House, including David Maxwell Fyfe and Hartley Shawcross, were architects of what was at the time a document that everyone in Britain was very proud of.

The convention was designed to address terrible abuses of human rights in a fractured continent. We have all read in history books about the state of post-war Europe, and it is important to put this debate into an historical context. Today we talk about European rows and problems, great though they are, but just 70 years ago—it is not ancient history—the continent was completely fractured. We now have a Europe in which we can argue about how human rights are best enforced, rather than a Europe in which we have to enforce basic human rights. The situation is immeasurably better now than it was, and that change has taken place during our lifetimes. We have come a long way from the time when the convention was absolutely necessary, but not everything has changed and our concern then—as now—was to give those who most needed protection from the excesses of state power a clear understanding of the rights and remedies available to them. That means that the human rights framework must be accessible and proportionate in its application.

The convention should be used to defend the most vulnerable, but because of the way some articles in the convention have been interpreted by the Court, people do not feel that that basic fairness is being applied any more. Indeed, the desire to ensure that the mechanisms in place to protect the most vulnerable exist for that reason and no other was at the heart of the programme of reform that turned into the Brighton declaration, just as it is at the heart of our calls now for further reform of the Court of Human Rights.

The Court is important for the protection of human rights from Iceland to Turkey, but as I have said it faces a huge backlog of nearly 130,000 applications. Some of those may include examples of the type of fundamental abuses that Maxwell Fyfe and others sought to remedy back in 1950 and in a very different world. However, if the Court is to retain its legitimacy—this point has rightly been raised in the debate—it must focus on its core functions. The UK helped draft the convention and there is no controversy about its values, which everyone still supports, even those most sceptical about the value of the Court. Many more people are extremely sceptical about the Court’s performance yet they nevertheless sign up to the basic values in the convention.

It cannot be repeated too often that the convention has contributed to important changes for the good in many countries across Europe; for example, the decriminalisation in many countries of homosexuality, or the recognition in former Soviet countries of religious freedom. Given our discussions today, and the frequent public discussions, about the necessity of protecting people’s capacity to express their religious views, it is worth remembering that in other countries the convention has been extremely helpful in allowing people to express their basic freedoms.

There are other examples. Legal systems and police behaviour have been improved by the convention in countries where the tradition of democracy and the rule of law is less than it is in ours. I hope we can all agree that the problem is not the convention itself, but how it is sometimes interpreted.

Our concerns about the Court bring us back to its fundamental role; it is supposed to focus on the most egregious violations of human rights throughout Europe. We might think that the UK would rarely, if ever, be found in breach, and I am happy to say that is the general situation. Last year, the Strasbourg Court ruled against the UK in only 10 instances. The underlying question we need to consider is whether those cases, and the apparent breaches, were of a magnitude that the founders of the convention would recognise. We have to ask ourselves what we expect of the Court today and how we can help to restore its legitimacy. Those are the questions we are dealing with now.

We would like the Court to have the following priorities, particularly after the Brighton declaration. First, it should not involve itself in cases that national courts have already decided properly. In this country, one would expect that to be so more often than not. Secondly, the Court should focus its resources on the most deserving cases; on the surface, a backlog of nearly 130,000 suggests that is not happening. Thirdly, the Court should not delve into our own legislation without very good reason. The margin of appreciation must be observed. Fourthly, judges adjudicating serious cases must be of the highest quality. Each of those priorities would involve a big programme of reform for the Court, but individually and collectively they are extremely important to ensure continuing support for the legitimacy of the Court. We may yet need deeper and more fundamental reform to preserve the role of the convention.

At the outset, I mentioned a Commission on the Bill of Rights, and I referred to its findings in relation to the provisions in my hon. Friend’s Bill. I remind the House of some of the commission’s key conclusions.

[Martin Horwood]

I am eager to hear the commission’s conclusions, but given the fact that the Government are opposing the Bill and supporting the next Bill we are to debate, which would reinforce the Government’s commitment to devoting 0.7% of our national wealth to international development, I hope the Minister will be able to share the commission’s findings with the House in writing rather than extending debate on the Bill unnecessarily.

European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Damian Green and Martin Horwood

Monday 4th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood]

I do not often agree with the hon. Gentleman on matters European, but I do agree that there is a slight risk of that happening, as we have all been aware over many decades. We have to be careful about the level of democratic accountability in the European Union. I would always support increasing democratic reform and democratic accountability in the EU where we can do so.

There is the potential for endless growth in the number of commissioners, or at least for the number to be limited only by the number of European states that might join the EU. It was clear from the Irish referendum debate that, as any fan of the TV series “Borgen” will know, for smaller countries the appointment of a European commissioner is a major political issue to which people attach a great deal of importance, and we have to respect that. We are a community of many nations with many different priorities, and it is important that we acknowledge that. To that extent, I support the Government in backing this measure.

The hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) made a brave effort to make this debate sound like a very contentious one that demands this level of scrutiny. In the spirit of coalition unity, I recognise that the European Union Act 2011 has brought a greater level of accountability and scrutiny to European legislation in this place, and that process could go further. At the beginning of last year, Ministers announced that there would be a review of the way in which scrutiny of European legislation took place. Submissions were invited, and I found myself in rare agreement with the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) in suggesting that Select Committees should automatically and routinely vet European legislation that was relevant to their briefs. Will Ministers update us on the progress of that process and say how far down the path we are towards introducing such routine and automatic scrutiny by Select Committees?

[Damian Green]

In the interests of the many parliamentarians I see assembled on these Benches, I should point out that the procedures of Select Committees are very much not for the Government to decide but are a matter for this House.