Protection of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms (Hansard, 12 February 1992)

§ Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to secure to every person within the United Kingdom the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights and its protocols, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and certain other rights and freedoms; to ensure that there are effective remedies before the courts and tribunals of the United Kingdom for breaches of these fundamental rights and freedoms; to give such fundamental rights and freedoms the same precedence and priority within the legal systems of the United Kingdom as are given to enforceable Community rights under section 2(1) and (4) of the European Communities Act 1972; to establish a United Kingdom Human Rights Commission with power to initiate legal proceedings for the protection of these fundamental rights and freedoms and to give advice and assistance concerning the protection of these rights; to enable the Human Rights Commission to challenge the validity of any provision of any Act of Parliament that in its opinion is in contravention of the guarantees of the fundamental rights and freedoms secured by this Act by instituting legal proceedings in the High Court, the Court of Session or the High Court of Northern Ireland as the case requires; to enable the Human Rights Commission to examine legislation or proposed legislation for the purpose of ascertaining whether it is inconsistent with the provisions of this Act and to report any such inconsistency to Parliament; and for connected purposes.

The Bill would secure for every person within the United Kingdom the protection of the fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed by the European convention on human rights and its protocols and by the international covenant on civil and political rights, and would establish a United Kingdom human rights commission with powers to initiate legal proceedings for the protection of these rights and for connected purposes.

It is about 40 years since a Labour Government under the prime ministership of Clement Attlee acceded to the European convention. The convention had been drafted largely by an English lawyer—Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe—who was subsequently to become Lord Chancellor in a Conservative Government. In 1966, the Government of Mr. Harold Wilson—as he then was—provided that a right of individual petition to the European Commission and Court of Human Rights should be granted. Since then, the United Kingdom Government have had to defend many cases in Strasbourg before the Commission and that Court.

There have been a number of attempts in Parliament—three times in another place and twice in recent years in this place—to secure the incorporation of the European convention on human rights into the domestic law of our country, to ensure that citizens whose fundamental rights and freedoms have been abridged or attacked by an abuse of public power or by the tyranny of the majority should be permitted to have access to our own domestic courts for a remedy. The guarantee of these rights without the provision of such a remedy is basically meaningless.

We stand alone in Europe—the only country among the members of the Council of Europe which does not offer such a fundamental protection in the form of a basic law which may be used to strike down the action or abuse of power by Ministers, public authorities or even Parliament itself.

§ Mr. Maclennan

In the free democratic Commonwealth, there is no country that does not give the rights that the Bill seeks to promote. The last country which stood with us in not having a Bill of Rights was New Zealand; in 1990, New Zealand enacted a Bill of Rights.

This country and this Parliament have legislated for others to secure that right. We did so for the people of Canada and, most recently, last summer, we did so for the people of Hong Kong. But we have not sought to protect our own citizens by means of a measure which is necessary and which we have recognised as necessary in other civilised parliamentary democracies.

The case for such legislation is now strong. I make no partisan points about the abuses of power that have disfigured the present Government, for there have been abuses by both parties of Government. In the past two years, there have been five serious breaches of the rights of the citizen, and judgment has been found against this country by the court in Strasbourg. A further six cases have been deemed admissible before the court by the European Commission of Human Rights.

These are not light matters; they are not academic matters. They touch on the very fundamentals of our freedoms. They affect the right of association, and the freedom of trade unionists not to be part of a closed shop. They touch on freedom of education—the right not to be dragooned against one's will into sending one's children to a school not of one's choice. They govern freedom of expression, and the entitlement of newspapers and the other media to publicise abuses, as The Sunday Times did with the thalidomide case.

Those are the important rights which protect—or should protect—our citizens in this democracy. But before people obtain a remedy they have to take the long and expensive course to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg—a typical case takes up to six years. That cannot be right. The time has come to ensure that the procedures for securing those rights are simpler.

The Bill asks British judges in the nations of this country to adjudicate to protect citizens from abuse. That judges are capable of so doing has been demonstrated already, by their readiness, when they sit as the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, to give effect to Bills of Rights enacted by other countries in the Commonwealth. Judges also have increasing experience of giving effect to the broad principles of those rights when enacted by the European Community's legislative process.

It is ironic that the European Court of Justice is recognising the binding effect of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in its procedures, and so, indirectly, our judges are called upon to give effect to those rights in commercial cases. But perhaps the most important cases decided by the European Court of Human Rights are not commercial cases but those that touch upon the family and the individual.

The time has come to move. British public opinion is clear, because, in an opinion poll published by MORI in The Independent in October, 79 per cent. of the British people favoured such a step.

The Bill is unlikely to reach the statute book in the latter part of this Parliament, but it can signal to the public the readiness of Parliament to make good a deficiency that has stood for too long.