Oral Answers to Questions

Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. We addressed that during our chairmanship of the Council of Europe. We had a conference at Brighton of all 47 member states and produced the Brighton declaration. Our considerable achievement there was not very widely reported because, not surprisingly, the media regarded it as a footnote to the Abu Qatada case which was in the newspapers at the time. Forty-seven countries agreed that we should have a greater margin of appreciation, to use the jargon, and that more regard should be paid to those decisions of the courts of nation states which had obviously addressed their obligations under the convention. That will have a considerable impact on future cases.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

Is it not long overdue that the Government move to ensure that the courts of the United Kingdom, rather than the European Court, have supremacy in the area of human rights, including protection of Christian liberties and freedoms?

[Mr Clarke]

We are taken to the Court much less than other members and we lose only about 2%. Sometimes that 2% includes cases where there is widespread support here for the decision, such as the holding of DNA and other information belonging to people who have never been convicted of a criminal offence, which was a recent judgment. The convention still has a very important role to play across Europe. It is hugely significant in the 47 member states and it enables standards to be applied in places all the way from Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan across to us and Iceland. We have always been subject to the rule of law. We have always bound ourselves under the convention to accept the judgments. These are the standards that we all agreed upon after the second world war, which were not challenged in this country till 10 or 15 years ago, when some judgments here began to annoy sections of the media.