European Convention on Human Rights: 75th Anniversary

Lord Faulks Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, about 10 years ago, as a Minister, I visited the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. I was there to apologise to the Committee of Ministers for the fact that we had not yet given prisoners the vote. While I was there, the president of the court kindly gave me a book about the convention and the court entitled The Conscience of Europe. It was a fascinating account of the establishment of the court and its development for the subsequent 65 years.

But it is important to remember the context in which the convention was born. The noble Earl has given a very vivid account of that. This was a continent devastated by war in which the population had been deprived of all the most basic human rights. But did the architects of the ECHR really envisage that an asylum seeker here would be able to rely on the convention when arguing that his children’s liking for chicken nuggets meant that he should not be returned to his country of origin because to do so would violate his human rights? This and so many other cases have trivialised human rights and are not reflective of the legacy of those responsible for the convention.

I declare an interest as a member of the Commission on a Bill of Rights set up by the coalition Government. Perhaps more important is the fact that, since the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force, I have regularly acted for public authorities. Time does not permit me to give a full list of all my failures, but I was recently reminded of one. A group of prisoners sought damages on the basis that their human rights had been violated because they were not given heroin while in prison—a breach of Article 3, apparently. I acted for the police because a number of Nigerian young women living in this country had been kept in domestic servitude by some rather richer Nigerians. The court was asked to find, and did find, that the police were guilty of a violation of human rights for not being sufficiently curious—not the girls’ captors, the police.

I am extremely reluctant to suggest leaving an international institution of any sort. We know they are rarely perfect, but it is surely better that they exist. I am conscious of the importance of remaining on good terms with our European allies, particularly at this moment, and I voted to remain in the European Union, but I have come to the conclusion that at the very least we should repeal the Human Rights Act. The obligation in that legislation to take into account Strasbourg jurisprudence has produced some very unsatisfactory results. The process of taking into account can itself be difficult, given the variable quality of some of the judgments. It has meant that we pay far greater heed to the court’s decisions than any other countries in the Council of Europe—a particular irony, since there are so few decisions against the United Kingdom.

This Government have an almost theological approach to the ECHR and the HRA, but critics of the way in which it has operated in practice are not confined to those on the right, as noble Lords may have observed. My view is that Parliament and the courts are not only capable of but better suited to protecting human rights here. Our current arrangements amount to a significant subcontracting of the task to an international court.

Like others, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for bringing this debate to your Lordships’ House. With his passion for the protection of human rights, he would have made a great contribution to the ECHR had he been around at the time. Indeed, he would have been a worthy guardian of the conscience of Europe. It is thus a matter of profound regret that I must express the view that the whole concept of human rights has been brought significantly into disrepute.