European Convention on Human Rights: UK Membership

William Cash Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

May I start by returning the right hon. Gentleman’s compliments? I very much enjoyed serving in government with him and I have the highest regard for him as an individual. He is a little unfair about coalition government; in my experience, it was not unstable much of the time. We should recognise—he and I, and all other Members of the House—that what we did in coalition was to produce pieces of legislation such as the Modern Slavery Act that recognised the real actions we could take in pursuit of defending human rights, and this Government will continue that course.

It is not right to say, as the right hon. Gentleman suggested, that there is confusion on this policy. I have set it out and he was here in the Chamber when my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Justice did the same. There is no confusion here. What has been said throughout—by the Prime Minister and all other Ministers—is that we rule nothing out in seeking to achieve the policy objective that we have set and for which we have a clear mandate from the recent general election.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about membership of the European Union. It is not, I am afraid, in any way clear that membership of the European Union requires membership of the European convention on human rights; as with most of these things—he and I are both lawyers—he will understand that there are considerable legal complexities, so that is certainly not a clear statement that I or he can make.

Let me simply say this to the right hon. Gentleman: what the Home Secretary was doing yesterday—in a speech with which, I suspect, he broadly agreed, and which I certainly found made a very persuasive case for remaining in the European Union—was setting out some of the difficulties with the human rights landscape as it stands. We think there are considerable difficulties: there is an absence of common sense and there have been cases that have demonstrated that human rights law is headed in the wrong direction. Restoring that common sense is the objective of the entire Government.

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that our fight against terrorism and excessive immigration has been persistently undermined by not only the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg but the European Court of Justice adjudicating on the charter of fundamental rights, and that the only answer is to leave the European Union?

[The Attorney General]

I certainly agree that there have been cases in both Luxembourg and Strasbourg with which we have found difficulty and which we have sought to contest. It is certainly right, as my hon. Friend suggests, that not everything about our membership of the European Union is wonderful, and the Home Secretary made that point very clearly yesterday. However, it is a question of deciding whether, on balance, it is right or wrong to be in the European Union—whether, on balance, it is better or worse for the United Kingdom to be there—and he and I have come to different conclusions on that.

On my hon. Friend’s specific point about the charter of fundamental rights, he will know that the charter covers areas where European law is applicable; it does not cover other areas, so it is not quite the same as our membership of the European convention on human rights.