European Convention on Human Rights: UK Membership Debate
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
Main Page: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)Department Debates - View all Jacob Rees-Mogg's debates with the Attorney General
European Convention on Human Rights: UK Membership
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(8 years ago)
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The Attorney General
Again, I would say to the right hon. Gentleman that there is more to promoting human rights here and abroad than our membership of that court or even of the convention. We do a great deal more to help to promote human rights, and we should continue to do so.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
May I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for showing himself also to be gallant in defending the Home Secretary’s position? There seem to be a couple of errors in her speech. One was that she said it was the European Court of Human Rights that stopped us deporting foreign people, when it was in fact the ECJ that stopped Abu Hamza’s daughter-in-law being removed, contrary to the Home Secretary’s view.
On the issue of whether we have to be in the European convention on human rights while in the EU, I refer my right hon. and learned Friend to article 6.3 of the treaty on European Union:
“Fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the European Convention …shall constitute general principles of the Union’s law.”
Furthermore, the Commission, when asked specifically what would happen if a member state left the convention, said it would consider using article 7, which allows for the suspension of a member’s voting rights. It seems to me that, for once, European treaties are written in clear language that is understandable even to non-lawyers.
The Attorney General
On my hon. Friend’s last point, if only that were true. I do not think there is the simplicity that he suggests there is on that point. He is of course right that ECHR principles contribute to European Union via the charter, but that is not the same as putting together the European convention on human rights and European law and saying that they are indistinguishable and indivisible from each other. That is not the position.
In relation to deportation, the difficulty we often face, as my hon. Friend will know, is the interpretation of article 8 of the convention, which deals with the right to a family life. That is a good example of the way in which rights drawn up perfectly sensibly in the convention can be extended beyond where they were meant to go, or of how the balancing exercise at the heart of all human rights law is not conducted in what he and I would consider to be a sensible way.