Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Huppert Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

We are going to review in due course every aspect of the working of the Human Rights Act in the light of that 10 years of experience. I agree that there are very important protections for human rights, and there is no question of moving away from the European convention on human rights. The coalition agreement does not contemplate that. Actually, the changes that have taken place in British common law, with the huge enlargement of the scope of judicial review—which includes reviews of all ministerial decisions and of legislation current in the House—have also greatly altered the scene. Sometimes that gets confused with the European convention on human rights. I have given a range of views in the past and no doubt we will consider those views carefully in the light of the report that we eventually get from the commission.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Is the Lord Chancellor aware of the book by the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) and Peter Oborne entitled “Churchill’s Legacy: The Conservative Case for the Human Rights Act”? Will he encourage his right hon. and hon. Friends to read it and thereby dispel the many myths about the Act? The Human Rights Act exists for all of us: what is not to like?

[Mr Clarke]

The European convention on human rights was produced after the second world war, largely at the instigation of Churchill and others, to ensure that the whole continent developed in line with those values for which the British had fought the war. The principal architect and draftsman of the convention was a man called Maxwell Fyfe. I recall that history because it is relevant to this issue, and we have to improve public understanding of the application of human rights in British law as well as reviewing the operation of the Act.