Debate on the Address

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 27th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my east midlands colleague, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). Not for the first time, he has made a very thoughtful and interesting speech. I hope that those who did not have the opportunity to listen to it will read it in Hansard tomorrow. I dare say that the good people of Nottinghamshire will set it to music.

I agree with the general thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s point that to be a Member of Parliament on the Government Benches does not absolve us from holding the Government to account. It is important for all of us, from whichever part of the country and party we come, to remember that our job as a Member of Parliament is, first, to represent our constituents, but secondly, to hold the Government to account. During discussions on the Queen’s Speech, it is important to remember that constitutional point. Even though we have a largely unwritten constitution—it is written down in several different documents, not in one compendious constitutional document—the Executive sit in Parliament, but should not be allowed to sit on Parliament. That distinction tends to be forgotten by those of us who get more or less enthusiastic about ambition, promotion or whatever it may be. The hon. Gentleman’s speech was a timely reminder, at the start of this Parliament, that individual Members have a special role to perform.

I want briefly to complain about the yet further delay to the development of St Luke’s hospital in Market Harborough—I weave this in because the Queen’s Speech referred to the NHS—which means that this farce has continued into another year. The delay has now lasted for more or less the entire 23 years of my membership of the House. The waste of taxpayers’ money has been compounded year on year, under the coalition Government, under the Labour Governments prior to 2010 and under the Conservative Governments in the 1990s. It is a disgrace, and I hope that the Secretary of State for Health and his Ministers will get a grip of the throats of the management of the scheme and make sure that something is done.

On another quick point, unlike the hon. Member for Nottingham North, I regret the Fixed-term Parliaments Act and had rather hoped we would see measures to repeal it. I have not yet given up hope, but who knows? I simply put that down for later consideration.

I want to talk most about the provision in the Queen’s Speech where the Queen said:

“My Government will bring forward proposals for a British Bill of Rights”.

It seems to me that too many politicians have not read the law and do not understand the human rights regime in this jurisdiction, but it is equally fair to say that far too many lawyers do not understand the politics—I plead guilty as a lawyer. There is therefore a tension between the desire of a Government full of politicians to do something that is politically attractive and the desire among stuffy old lawyers to inhibit the political will of the Government, either because they are legally illiterate or just inconvenient.

If I am delighted about anything relating to human rights legislation that the Queen’s Speech deals with, it is that there appears to be a delay, or some proposal to allow the matter to be thought about. I refer hon. Members to pages 60 and 73 of the Conservative party manifesto, which I confess I only read the other day, some days after the general election. Page 73 states:

“We will scrap the Human Rights Act”,

and page 60 states:

“We will reform human rights law and our legal system”.

I will not amuse the House with the paragraphs underneath those two headlines. The proposals in the manifesto are confused, and because they are confused they are confusing, thereby fuelling the tension between the politicians in a hurry and the lawyers who do not like politics.

I have identified seven points that need to be thought about carefully as we consider what to do about the human rights story. There are seven political and legal difficulties to overcome if we are to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights. First, as discussed, there is the impact on Scottish devolution, and secondly there is the impact on the Good Friday agreement—in addition, there is the effect on the Welsh devolution settlement. Thirdly, there is the need to deal with Conservative supporters of the Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights. That is a straightforward piece of political management that the Government will have to sort out. Fourthly, again on a matter of political management, they will have to think about what to do when an amendment to, or repeal of, the human rights regime gets to the other place. They do not have a majority there, so some acute minds—political, legal, intellectual and otherwise—will have to be deployed to get the matter through the House of Lords. Fifthly, we will have to work out which rights are to be protected, and sixthly, we will have to work out how those rights will be enforced and the legal form the Bill of Rights will take. Seventhly, and perhaps most importantly, somebody has to explain why any of this exercise is necessary in the first place.

It is a hugely complicated subject and not something that will be dealt with between now and Thursday week, when the final votes on the Queen’s Speech are taken, but there is the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) frequently brings up and which formed the subject of his European Scrutiny Committee’s 43rd report, during the 2013-14 Session. I refer to the charter of fundamental rights—an EU instrument that broadly replicates the convention—which article 6 of the treaty on European Union appears to bring within British domestic law. If we repeal the Human Rights Act, we will not disengage ourselves from the convention. We can do what the hell we like with the Act—repeal it, turn it upside down, put it through a mincer—but it will not affect our international treaty obligations under the convention, of which we have been a member since the 1950s. Ministers and others who are keen to see the Act repealed need to think very carefully about what they are doing.

There are complaints that the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has become too political and been staffed by unqualified or inadequate judicial minds. That is for others to say. However, the lack of self-confidence that we have in our own institutions is not borne out by the evidence. Section 2 of the Human Rights Act does not state that the British courts have to kowtow to Strasbourg; it simply states that they have to take account of its judgments. Frequently our courts take account of its judgments and come to a different conclusion, and there is nothing wrong with that. I therefore urge the Government and Members of a different persuasion from me to read the documents and think carefully about the consequences of what they are doing, and not to tilt at the wrong windmill, because it will end in tears.

That said, in the last few seconds available to me, I want to assure my hon. Friend on the Treasury Bench that the rest of the Queen’s Speech is utterly wonderful.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—