Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights Debate
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Wera Hobhouse
Main Page: Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat - Bath)Department Debates - View all Wera Hobhouse's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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Cat Eccles
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; it is difficult to see which of those rights needs to be updated, replaced or taken away.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The UK was instrumental in the creation of the ECHR. The Council of Europe now says that it is ready for reform. Is it not time for us to shape the future of human rights legislation in Europe, and absolutely the wrong time to abandon our place at the table?
Cat Eccles
The hon. Lady is absolutely right—we need to be around that table. We were there at the start, and we need to see it through and ensure that we maintain our place in that conversation.
Why not replace the ECHR with a British Bill of Rights? Well, we have one—the Human Rights Act 1998. The ECHR was drafted by British lawyers based on Britain’s common law and Magna Carta. In fact, during the negotiations on the Good Friday agreement, a British Bill of Rights was drafted and later rejected by right-wing politicians, to prevent a difference of rights across the Irish border.
It is because of the ECHR that a ban on gay people serving in the armed forces could be challenged and overturned by a young barrister whom we now know as the Prime Minister. A memorial was unveiled this week to commemorate those who served during that historical ban from 1967 to 2000. It is because of the ECHR that we got justice for the Hillsborough victims and were able to present the Hillsborough law, the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill, in Parliament this week.
The ECHR allows us to hold Governments to account and seek justice when those in power try to cover things up or overstep their remit. We must ask ourselves, “Why would anyone want to remove a mechanism to prevent those in power from abusing that power?” How dark our future could be if that were allowed to happen.