Karen Buck
Main Page: Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)Department Debates - View all Karen Buck's debates with the Cabinet Office
(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Dominic Raab
Human rights reform will no more be a silver bullet for all the ills of the world than any other reform, but it will deal with a whole range of serious and significant issues that the people of this country, my right hon. Friend’s constituents and mine, want dealing with. The reason I give in the consultation paper—I wrote about it in The Times today—is that article 8 is an example of a qualified right that allows us to stretch, or to press, the margin of appreciation. Some 70% of the successful human rights challenges to deportation orders by foreign national offenders come from people claiming under article 8 on the right to a family life. That is a very good example of what we can address.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
Leading human rights lawyer and expert, and former adviser to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Adam Wagner, said of these proposals this morning that this Government may be the first in the history of liberal democracies to enact a Bill of Rights that has the effect of reducing rather than increasing rights and protections. Are a Government who have traditionally provided themselves on the defence of the individual against the state proud of that description?
Dominic Raab
I do not accept it, but I know that a number of people, including the shadow Justice Secretary, have commented on the proposals before having read them. Freedom of speech, and trial by jury and the recognition that we can give to it, are just two examples of the way we can strengthen human rights, but also strengthen the credibility of human rights so that they are not dirty words in the minds of many of the public.