Human Rights

Lord Bates Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I, too, pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for giving us the opportunity for this debate. He is a rare champion for human rights, on which he has been consistent and persistent. In the role that he performs in this House, he is remarkably similar to Gary Streeter, my honourable friend in another place, who was the first chairman of the Conservative Human Rights Commission, set up in 2005 by William Hague. He, too, speaks up on these matters and has been a quiet and persistent voice representing the conscience of the Conservative Party and Parliament more widely. The commission’s work is to be approved and built on.

As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, it is no surprise that the Foreign Secretary should, as William Wilberforce’s biographer, find inspiration in Wilberforce—I know that my right honourable friend was moved by researching his life. My right honourable friend had the vision to ask what Britain can do that is similarly ambitious. He arrived at the area of human rights, about which he feels deeply passionate. When we as parliamentarians talk about the effect of Wilberforce, I am always mindful of the story that, although after many attempts he got the abolition of slavery through this House, it required policing by the Royal Navy to uphold the legislation. I think I am right in saying that that is still the most costly campaign that the Royal Navy has ever undertaken. Upholding the law is critical to our declarations of human rights, which are otherwise mere aspiration—there is no rigour to them.

It was not by accident, perhaps, that the Foreign Secretary should choose Lincoln’s Inn as the place in which to espouse his vision of a new impetus in the push for human rights. He said:

“The law is central to our values and is also the product of the same steady process of accumulation. The principles of due process and of no punishment without the law are both found in Magna Carta. The law is the ultimate guarantor of the rights of individuals”.

That is a powerful point. We need a degree of humility here. If we want to espouse human rights, we also have to be prepared to subjugate ourselves to the law, particularly the international law set up and articulated in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. We have to say that we are subject to that law. We have to behave accordingly and respect those institutions. If not, you end up with a kind of Melian dialogue in which, as has been said, the great powers do as they will and the weak suffer as they must. That is no fair world, whatever the aspirations. We all have to be subject to the law. Following the law and institutions is critical in this.

I illustrate that by talking about an opportunity that is coming up, although it may seem tangential to this debate. I have been rattling on—without a great deal of support from my own side, it has to be said—about the campaign for the Olympic Truce. Why do I mention the Olympic Truce? I do so because it is backed by a United Nations resolution, which says that during the period of the Olympic Games, in London in 2012, all member states will take initiatives to pursue peace and reconciliation. The resolution is signed by all 193 member states, but there is no record of any Government or signatory taking any initiative for peace and reconciliation during any Olympic Games.

I know that there is a technical argument about General Assembly resolutions and Chapter VII United Nations Security Council resolutions but, be that as it may, my view is that the United Nations is our only hope for a rules-based international system. Therefore, we should take it seriously. When this Government, as the Government of the host nation, propose the resolution to the United Nations that we will pursue initiatives for peace and reconciliation, it behoves us to take that seriously. When we start taking seriously what we say in such fora, the message goes out and adds weight to the other excellent things that we are doing in the field of human rights and about which we have been talking.