---

Human Rights

My Lords, I add my congratulations to those already delivered by many other of your Lordships to the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, on initiating this debate, which I think everyone will agree has been first class. Many things of real constitutional value have flowed from the arrival of the Human Rights Act on our statute book. I can think of two particular principles that have been greatly advanced and enriched by the jurisprudence of the past 10 years. First, the principle of equality, rather undervalued by the common law, has shown a remarkable development by virtue of our courts applying the European Convention on Human Rights. Another principle that has prospered has been that of non-discrimination. In his own appearances in the courts, the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, has made a vital contribution to that. However, the Human Rights Act has not, in my judgment, commanded the public respect that it ought to have done and that it deserves. There are a number of reasons for this. First, there have undoubtedly been some foolish or misplaced decisions—I do not know how one would properly describe them—by public servants in the name of human rights that have benefited people who either did not deserve those benefits or at least were not perceived as deserving them. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has spent a great deal of time in the past two or three months agreeing that some of these decisions were foolish—I am thinking particularly of the one where a certain police force seemed reluctant to issue the photograph of an escaped criminal. The noble and learned Lord has promised that new directions will be delivered to civil servants and others serving in public authorities to ensure that incorrect interpretations of the human rights legislation will be, if not entirely eliminated, at least minimised. The second reason is that, despite the fact thatthe Human Rights Act is a product of the present Government, it continues to receive at best only lukewarm endorsement from Ministers. This is a particularly unattractive factor, especially when direct attacks are made on judges who base their decisions on human rights legislation, which is what the Act requires them to do. When political leaders make such attacks, it is no wonder that from time to time the public call its value into question. Thirdly, my noble friend Lord Onslow was at pains to point out that, far from protecting the traditional rights provided to us over the centuries by the common law, the Act has often proved useful camouflage for promoting legislation that undermines them. In developing his argument under Section 19, the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, made glancing references to these. One thinks of jury trial, habeas corpus and the conversion of what ought to be criminal offences into civil offences in order to lighten the standard of proof on the prosecution. One thinks of what I find a particularly offensive development in our criminal law—the changes made to the propensity rules in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Before the Human Rights Act was on the statute book, nobody would have dreamt of questioning these very hard earned, long established common-law rules. Yet we are now told that these changes are human rights convention compatible. The reason for this is that jury trial and a great deal of the evidential protections that flow from it are an unfamiliar feature on the continental jurisprudential terrain. Therefore, the European Court of Human Rights has been reluctant to grapple with these issues when they have been taken to Strasbourg. That is one of the reasons why talk of a British home-grown Bill of Rights is in the air. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, is chairman of Justice. I have the honour to serve as a vice-chairman of Justice under his benign leadership. We are both engaged in a project in Justice that seeks to assess whether the next stage in the development of human rights in the United Kingdom ought to be through our own home-grown legislation. My right honourable friend Mr David Cameron has established a committee in the Conservative Party chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell of Markyate, to address precisely the same issue. When Justice and the Conservative Party simultaneously think that there is a problem, it must be a problem well worth looking at. If a Bill of Rights proves to be a desirable future initiative, one of the most important contributions that it will make will be the protection of the defendant in criminal trials. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford rightly drew our attention to the frequent statements from government Ministers about rebalancing criminal law and criminal evidence in favour of victims, with the effect of reducing the rights of the accused. In other words, the defendant is more likely to be convicted. Nothing offends human rights more than a system that is prone to punishing the innocent. One of the objectives of a British Bill of Rights would be tomake sure that we do not have a system that is prone to that. There are other objectives of such a Bill. The noble Lords, Lord Goodhart and Lord Lester of Herne Hill, might not agree with what I am about to say; they will have their own views about what ought to appear. One area that I am particularly concerned about—I know that the noble Baroness is intimately involved in it at the moment—is the question ofdue process in administrative tribunals. We are establishing a common tribunal system with a common administration, but each one of the 70-odd tribunals has its own system of due process. In some cases, the system is absolutely right for the tribunal’s objective; in other cases, the process is wholly inappropriate. I would like to see some basic standards of due process set out for tribunals. My noble friend Lady Verma talked about us being the most photographed nation in Europe. How right she is—and it is not only a question of being the most photographed. We must be one of the nations that suffer most from invasions in our privacy. Information that government departments can obtain from us can now be shared with most if not all other government departments, for purposes that we do not know. This is another area that a Bill of Rights would address. My noble friend Lord Patten reminded us that important aspects of religious freedom ought to be enshrined in such a Bill. I do not want to enter today into whether the list that he provided is the right one, but he has an important principle, which ought to be considered by any drafting committee. The draftsmen will also have to confront some awkward questions, particularly in the area of terrorism. We are obliged, not only by Article 3 ofthe convention but also under the international Convention against Torture, not to deport a suspected terrorist where there is a real risk that he will suffer torture in his country of destination. Anyone who is complicit in a series of events that leads to somebody being tortured is effectively now committing an international crime. This is a real problem for us when we cannot prosecute people for the offence that we allege they have committed. I am not pretending for a moment that a Bill of Rights will make all the issues that we face easier. However, there are certainly gaps in the convention that we need to fill. A number of your Lordships, particularly the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, and the noble Lord, Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick, reminded us that the issueof human rights is an international problem andthat, compared with many other countries, we are extremely fortunate. The noble Earl, in particular, rightly said that we perhaps ought to spend rather less time engaged in navel-gazing and more time exporting the remarkable experiences that we have had in developing our human rights legislation and doing our very best to ensure that human rights breaches are minimised in international society. I know that that is a concern. The peroration of the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, addressed precisely that issue and the extent to which we ought now to be more directly engaged as a people in the United Nations conventions on various matters that have been raised by your Lordships today. That goes beyond the defined scope of today’s debate; but we should remind ourselves that those matters are nevertheless of great importance. I see that I have strayed a minute beyond my permitted time. In those circumstances, I shall hasten to sit down.