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Home Affairs and Justice

The hon. Gentleman has taken a very consistent approach to the incorporation of the 1998 Act, and has been absolutely firm on the issue. Indeed, when asked whether a Conservative version of a British Bill of Rights would make it easier to deport suspected terrorists to countries that might torture them, he replied on the record that he did not think that it would. We are grateful to him for that clarification; I hope that he has told the shadow Home Secretary. The answer to the hon. Gentleman, which he understands—I do not say that condescendingly—is this: in the convention, there are some rights on which there is very little margin of appreciation for any nation that adheres to the convention. That includes article 3, which is the basis of the Chahal judgment. On others, there is quite a wide margin of appreciation. The whole argument, originally led, in 1987, by the former distinguished Conservative Member the late Edward Gardner in a private Member's Bill in favour of incorporation, was that if we incorporated the provisions our courts would be able to adjudicate on them—and, yes, to gloss them, to use the hon. Gentleman's phrase. That is what they have sought to do. I invite the hon. Gentleman to await the publication of the Green Paper. However, in our judgment there are other areas in which, entirely consistently with the convention, the practice of Strasbourg and the margin of appreciation, greater discretion could be given—for example, in respect of article 13 on remedies, which is not incorporated, and of article 17, which deals with the abuse of rights and has not been developed as much as it should have been. That could be done without detracting in any sense from some of the fundamental rights, which I mentioned to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), that go with being a human being and nothing else.