Brexit: Human Rights

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the United Kingdom has a strong and proud record in upholding human rights. This is in large part due to our common law tradition and parliamentary democracy. Fundamental human rights, which so many Members of your Lordships’ House champion tirelessly—in season and out, at home and abroad—arise from irreducible moral truths about who we are, what we share and why our shared human dignity matters. Parliament and our courts are well equipped to deliberate and determine such matters. What the Government must make clear is that, in or out of the European Union, they have no intention of emasculating our obligations to uphold those fundamental rights.

The European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights is a good starting point but it is not the perfect paradigm. Commonwealth jurisdictions such as Australia and New Zealand protect rights at least as well as some European Union member states, and in some cases even better. The research of Professor John Finnis, Richard Ekins, Graham Gee and others in various papers published by Policy Exchange set out some helpful examples of best practice. I wonder whether the Minister has had the opportunity to read and reflect upon these in preparation for this debate. Can he also tell us what additional support the Government will give to the courts during the transitional period, to ensure that they are adequately enabled to adjudicate contested questions previously determined by European courts?

There is one area of law that neither we nor the EU have right, and that is the way in which we deal with the crime above all crimes: genocide and the associated crimes against humanity and war crimes. The noble and learned Lord will recall that I moved an amendment seeking a determination of the crimes by ISIS against Yazidis, Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria as a genocide. He will recall that in April 2016 the House of Commons passed a resolution declaring that a genocide was under way. Similar resolutions were passed by the European Parliament, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, the American Congress and others, yet such is the inadequacy of how we give effect to our duties under the 1948 genocide convention to prevent, protect and punish that, even now, no one has been brought before any court to stand trial for executions, rape, enslavement and a litany of other obscenities. Perhaps our failure to provide a proper mechanism to hold perpetrators to account is why we see the same ethnic cleansing being repeated against the Rohingya Muslims in Burma.

Earlier today, I met officials from the War Crimes Unit at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The UK deserves credit for securing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2379 to bring Daesh to justice, but as this is to be implemented via Iraqi courts I would like to hear what resources and assistance we are going to give to ensure that that approach is effective.

I have laid the Genocide Determination Bill before your Lordships’ House. It provides for the High Court of England and Wales to make a preliminary finding on cases of alleged genocide and for the subsequent referral of such findings to the International Criminal Court or a special tribunal. It spells out how the instruments that deliver justice need to be changed. I hope the Minister may give time and will agree to study the Bill and give it proper consideration, and I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, might do the same.

The 30 rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, from the right to life to the right to free speech, were born in the ashes of Auschwitz. They should continue to be the bedrock of our country’s principled approach to the upholding of human rights, and that is why today’s debate is of such importance.