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Human Rights

I beg to move, That this House do now adjourn. Fundamental rights have been recognised throughout our history from the time of Magna Carta. They have not always been protected very well, but there has always been an understanding that the machinery of the state, however democratically it acquired its power, could not ride roughshod over the governed. In the Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporated the rights from the European convention, we have a mechanism by which our values are given greater protection and greater status than ever before. We have all grown up with those values, but until that Act came into force in October 2000, we would have had to go to Strasbourg to enforce them. In the aftermath of the horrific events of the second world war, international powers worked out values around which humanity could unite and could be entrenched and made inalienable. The United Nations declaration of human rights set out those rights, but gave no practical help on their enforcement. The United Kingdom was keen on a new Europe-wide statement of human rights with some practical mechanisms. Both the UN declaration and that more practical document, the European convention on human rights, were heavily influenced by British values. The British inspired the debate, the drafting was led by the British and the values entrenched were British through and through.