Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

8. Whether he plans to hold a consultation on UK membership of the European convention on human rights.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

As I have made clear to the House before, although we cannot rule out leaving the ECHR for all eternity, our current plans for human rights reform do not involve leaving it.

[Ms Ahmed-Sheikh]

The Minister will be aware that the ECHR is, of course, enshrined in the Scotland Act 2012, so the UK cannot withdraw from it without fundamentally undermining the devolution settlement. Why is the Minister considering doing that?

[Mr Raab]

As I made clear, our current plans do not involve our pulling out of the convention, although we cannot rule it out for all eternity. The Human Rights Act 1998 already has an uneven application of rights to the devolved Administrations because of the devolved settlement. In Scotland, for example, the hourly rousing of detainees in police cells is unrelated to risk; in England and Wales, we do not have that, as it is focused on those who are vulnerable. I encourage the hon. Lady to focus her fire on addressing devolved issues such as that rather than pretending that there is some imminent threat to human rights from Westminster.