European Convention on Human Rights

Debate between Edward Leigh and Dominic Raab

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on securing tonight’s debate and pay tribute to his recent work as chair of the UK delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He is very knowledgeable in this field and he made a very powerful speech.

For all the contentious debate about human rights, few argue against the common-sense list of rights set out in the text of the European convention on human rights. The Government are and will remain committed to the protection of those rights. The United Kingdom was a founder member of the convention and was instrumental in its drafting. I have said on a number of occasions that those who suggest it was somehow an exclusively British creation are overegging the pudding or rewriting history. The negotiation of the convention saw an interesting contest of views between the common law and civil law traditions, as evidenced clearly in the travaux préparatoires of the convention, which are available online. The convention—the product of those negotiations —reflects the compromise between those two very different traditions and approaches.

Nevertheless, the concerns that have arisen about the convention are far less about being objections to the strict list of rights set out there; they lie more with its interpretation and application, which has been expanded and extended exponentially, well beyond what the original drafters intended. That is partly the result of judicial legislation by the Strasbourg Court, but it has been compounded by the design and structure of the Human Rights Act. It should be pointed out at this stage that serious criticisms have come from Labour Lord Chancellors, lawyers across the spectrum and senior British judges, as well as from Government Members. These problems have fuelled a rights inflation that has undermined this country’s liberal tradition of freedom and its approach to human rights, which is founded in Magna Carta and in the thinking of great British philosophers from John Locke and John Stuart Mill through to Isaiah Berlin. We have shifted towards imposing more and more obligations on government that require it to provide, rather than merely insisting that it refrain from acting in certain arbitrary ways, which was very much the history and tradition of the liberal approach. These developments have exposed us unnecessarily to judicial legislation at home and in Strasbourg that takes decisions out of the hands of this House.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The Minister is making a powerful critique of the convention, so perhaps he can now tell the House when we are going to fulfil our manifesto commitment to get out of it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Edward Leigh and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

2. What steps his Department is taking to increase value for money in its spending.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

We are determined to help eliminate the budget deficit and deliver better justice, which is why we are cutting 15% from the Ministry of Justice budget over the spending review, but finding £1.3 billion to overhaul the prison estate so that we drive down reoffending and ensure that my hon. Friend’s constituents get better value for money and better bang for their buck out of the justice system.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The Ministry of Justice has faced spending cuts as deep, or deeper, than any other Department in Whitehall, and yet, despite the occasional criticism and row, I am not sure whether the public has noted any discernible reduction in the service provided by the Department. Will my hon. Friend summon in the Secretaries of State for Health, Work and Pensions, International Development and Defence and give them a verbal tongue lashing about how we can emulate the private sector and create more wealth, goods, enterprise, deregulation and lower taxation and still provide better services?

[Mr Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for his insightful remarks. As a former Public Accounts Committee Chairman, he will appreciate that we have already slimmed back-office by £600 million so that we can extend rehabilitation to the 45,000 offenders on short sentences, where we have some of the highest reoffending. Now we are cutting the admin budget by 50%, but investing £700 million to modernise our courts. It shows that, whether we are talking about delays at courts or the offenders passing through them, we can drive efficiencies and deliver a more effective system.