Human Rights Act 1998

Lord Cashman Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, I am proud to speak in this debate and it is always a pleasure to follow my friend the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. I thank my noble friend Lady Whitaker for this important and timely debate and for her far-reaching introduction. I thank Professor Paul Johnson, the executive dean of the University of Leeds, for his invaluable advice and briefings from Justice, POhWER—including a coalition of charities—Amnesty and the Scottish Human Rights Commission, which warned us about the Government’s intention to replace the HRA and the negative consequences that could follow. I note with concern the absence of a briefing from the English Equality and Human Rights Commission.

I apologise for being blunt, but when I think about the practical impact of the Human Rights Act it is personal, because the impact of the Act has been deeply profound for LGBT people like me. Indeed, the very concept of equality, in which our legislation later developed, began with the equal age of consent. I think back to when the Labour Government introduced the Bill that became the HRA, and of the great promise made in this House by the then Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, that:

“This Bill will bring human rights home”,


so that

“the human rights of individuals and minorities should be protected by law”.—[Official Report, 3/11/97; cols. 1228, 1234.]

As a minority, I take the protection of my rights by the HRA very seriously indeed. I remember when, year after year, decade after decade, LGBT people and other defamed minorities were forced to go through extremely lengthy and costly proceedings to reach the European Court of Human Rights to gain protection under the European Convention on Human Rights in the United Kingdom. Even though the United Kingdom, as we have heard, was a signatory to the convention, individuals had limited mechanisms before the Human Rights Act to enforce their convention rights in full in the domestic courts. This produced the disgraceful situation in which domestic courts often acknowledged that LGBT people suffering discrimination would win if they advanced a complaint under the convention in the Strasbourg court but were powerless to help them in the United Kingdom.

In this respect, I need mention only the so-called gays in the military case, in which my friend the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, then sitting in the High Court, noted the extreme limits created by the lack of the convention not forming part of domestic law, resulting in litigants having to pursue their claims in Strasbourg, where of course they won.

The Human Rights Act gave LGBT people like me and other minorities a vital cloak of protection that we never had before. It is a protection that is in operation every single day, both in the private and public spheres. The Government’s plan to repeal the Human Rights Act in the Bill of Rights Bill should horrify anyone concerned with the development and protection of human rights in the United Kingdom. It is an act of vandalism.

It should be realised that the Bill of Rights Bill is probably a staging post for the ultimate aim of some in this Government to remove the United Kingdom from the convention itself. Indeed, provisions in the Bill of Rights Bill, which will create a damaging disconnect between the domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights, have the great potential for once again forcing LGBT people and others to go to Strasbourg when the UK courts are less responsive to protecting their convention rights. This will potentially result in a rapid rise in violations against the United Kingdom in the Strasbourg court, which I fear will be used by a Government of this type down the line to make the tired and obscene claim that a foreign court with foreign judges is meddling in our domestic affairs and that the UK should leave the convention system.

I hang my head in shame at the kind of country we are becoming; a country where once again rights are seen as unaffordable, and people are being depicted as a threat from which others should be protected. It is happening now. Look at trans women and trans men; we have seen the casual and unacceptable dehumanisation of an entire minority, with dangerous consequences. Ultimately, any civilised country is judged by how it treats the most disfavoured and how it treats those who seek sanctuary and justice. In this regard our country has been brought low and is sinking further.

I conclude by reminding noble Lords that the Human Rights Act brings rights home and that is ultimately good for everyone. I resolutely oppose taking away the vital protection of the HRA. We are all diminished and debased by such squalid intentions.