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Human Rights

It is privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who made an extremely eloquent and thoughtful contribution on human rights and values. The Human Rights Act should be repealed, and the United Kingdom should withdraw from the European convention on human rights. That view may not find a great deal of favour in the Westminster village, but it has gained favour in the country at large. As a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I do not believe that it is enough simply to repeal the Human Rights Act. The UK must curtail courts’ ability to adjudicate on the basis of the ECHR, which necessarily involves withdrawing from the convention, and not merely unincorporating it from UK law. Criminal rights legislation must be scrapped in its entirety. The Human Rights Act gave UK courts the ability to adjudicate directly on the basis of the ECHR. Prior to the incorporation of the convention in UK law, domestic courts referred to it in a limited way, but since incorporation, they have adjudicated with growing frequency on the basis of the ECHR. In doing so, they have begun actively to prevent our democratically elected Government from responding to serious challenges facing the country. Public policy solutions must be developed to respond to the new challenges posed by terrorism and the mass movement of people, but human rights legislation prevents us from developing effective responses to those challenges. There are three cases in which it can be shown that it is not simply the Human Rights Act that is at fault but the ECHR: the failure to deport nine Afghan hijackers; the granting of freedom to Anthony Rice to commit murder; and the failure to deport foreign criminals. Apologists for the Human Rights Act will undoubtedly, and disingenuously, try to make the case that it is not the Act per se that is at fault, but that is correct only insofar that it is the ECHR rather than the Act that is to blame. Turning to the failure to deport the Afghan hijackers, on 10 May 2006, the High Court overturned the Home Secretary’s decision that it was not appropriate to grant nine Afghan nationals discretionary leave to enter the UK. The Government’s reaction to the High Court judgment suggested that the High Court had somehow incorrectly interpreted human rights law. The implication seemed to be that the Human Rights Act was at fault. This was not, strictly speaking, the case. It was the European convention on human rights, as much as the Act, that was responsible for the failure to remove the nine supposed hijackers. The decision that the nine Afghan nationals could not be returned to Afghanistan was taken not by the High Court on 10 May 2006, but by a panel of three immigration adjudicators on 9 June 2004, and the adjudicators ruled that the Afghans be allowed to remain in the UK under article 3 of the European convention on human rights. The adjudicators’ decision was not made on the basis of any disputed interpretation of the Human Rights Act. Rather, it was the interpretation of the European convention on human rights by the Strasbourg court that was responsible. The hijackers were correctly refused asylum by the adjudicators under the Geneva refugee convention, but they were given what is, in effect, a back-door asylum right under the ECHR. Another big myth about the human rights legislation is that surrounding the decision to give freedom to Anthony Rice. Again, it is highly disingenuous—