Human Rights Legislation

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I pass on our best wishes to the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). I hope that she is back up and running and well soon.

I say to the hon. Gentleman that we think that it is elected lawmakers who should have the last word on the laws of the land—that includes the devolved competencies. What he is saying, logic would suggest, is that he wants Strasbourg to be able to overrule not just Westminster but the Scottish Parliament. We are supporting democracy in all the nations of the UK and in this House.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

This is the third or fourth attempt by successive Tory Governments to fillet the Human Rights Act, and it is no more coherent than the ones that were abandoned. We know that it is intended to pick on what are perceived as the easier or unpopular targets, but it will mainly disadvantage ordinary citizens of this country who are victims of unlawful decisions by the state. It purports to repatriate powers from Europe, but we are rightly staying in the European convention on human rights, so more decisions will go to Strasbourg. Judges will no longer be bound by the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, but they are not now. Will he take the opportunity of the consultation to look at that again and see whether the measures are coherent in any way?

[Dominic Raab]

I think this is the first time that a consultation document has been put forward to the House of Commons. The hon. Gentleman is right that it has been much debated; we are now taking action. I am afraid that I disagree with him: we are very much focused on protecting and strengthening our tradition of freedom, of which I have given freedom of speech as an example.

Frankly, the hon. Gentleman has a choice to make. He can sit back and bask in the generalities of what he has said, or he can recognise, as the former Home Secretary and architect of the Human Rights Act does, that there has been abuse of the system and that if we reform and take our responsibilities in this House seriously, we can make a change for the better and introduce some much-needed common sense.