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Mr. Maclennan: The right hon. and learned Gentleman may have overlooked the most recent Bill that my noble Friend Lord Lester introduced in the House of Lords, which did not go so far as the right hon. and learned Gentleman is suggesting in seeking to strike down primary legislation by incorporation. The Bill received widespread support among the Law Lords who spoke in the debate.
Sir Nicholas Lyell: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that information. I have in fact looked extremely carefully at that Bill and compared it with the other one. A paper in the second edition of the new magazine on European human rights law deals with the matter. I am afraid that I must ask the hon. Gentleman to look more carefully at the issue. Although Lord Lester's new Bill cuts out the express terms of his earlier Bill, which would enable primary legislation to be struck down, it still contains terms that, in my view, require and can only be construed as requiring, courts to do exactly the same thing. Indeed, Lord Lester wrote an article in The Times only the day before yesterday, saying that that is the power he believed the courts should have. My warning is therefore a real one.
I was making the point that incorporation would bring judges into the political arena. One prime article of the convention, article 8, which says that everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence, is something with which everyone would agree. Instantly, however, one moves to the qualifications to the exercise of that right, which are:
The counter-argument is that it is better to have some input from our judiciary than simply to leave matters to the Strasbourg judiciary. I acknowledge the force of that counter-argument. The danger is also that it will cut out this House and the other place--our Parliament--and that we shall find our law being made by a judiciary that has been forced, by incorporation legislation passed by this House, to take on a quasi-legislative role. Furthermore, that quasi-legislative role, which the courts will fulfil, will be carried out not merely according to the notions of our own judiciary, who are brought up in and understand our country, but in accordance with the views of judges from some 33 nations. To quote another leading authority, the convention
A further warning is needed. We are handing responsibility to the judiciary in accordance with a body of law that we did not make. If we lose in our own courts all the way up to the House of Lords, my understanding is that the Crown--the Government of this country--cannot take an appeal to Strasbourg; only an applicant can take a case to Strasbourg. I should be grateful if the Secretary of State for Wales would take advice on that point and address it when he winds up. We would also have no democratic way to change the law once it was thus fixed, because no mechanism exists for the 33 countries--possibly 41 by the time the legislation reaches the statute books--to alter it democratically.
I am not opposed to our membership of the convention and I believe that, with one or two unfortunate exceptions, it has been said to work, thanks to the leadership and wisdom of the senior judges. I commend particularly the president of the European Court of Human Rights, Judge Ryssdal, who has shown immense wisdom in recognising the importance of a wide margin of appreciation for member states. However, real dangers must be addressed and real questions must be answered before we incorporate the convention in our domestic law.
Before I conclude, I return to the subject of the House of Lords. The same need for careful thought applies to the Government's proposals for reform of the House of Lords. I say, with all the force and belief at my command, that it is unacceptable to propose to change the present system, by abolishing the rights of hereditary peers, without first providing a Bill to put something in its place. I see the Secretary of State for Scotland frowning and shaking his head mildly--I am glad that he is shaking it only mildly. We have time for thought, and we need thought on the subject. The Government have a responsibility to propose an alternative system.
Why is this issue important? The House of Lords has two key functions. First, it has an important role as a revising Chamber. Secondly, and even more important, there is its role as a constitutional anchor. We had a majority less than 10 years ago--it is still less than10 years ago--of 144 and the Government now have a majority of 180. In the case of a large majority for the Government, the restraint provided by the second Chamber, in whatever form, is essential. It may have been inconvenient to us 10 years ago and it may be inconvenient to the Government in the coming years, but it is a necessary and proper discipline.
I strongly support the first-past-the-post principle for this Chamber. It gives a decisive result and the gearing effects, win or lose, mean that the views of the people are well reflected here. The Government of the day can normally govern effectively with a working majority.
The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) is smiling at me. I know that he disagrees and that he would like a German-style system in which his party would always be in the middle and part of government. I can think of nothing less democratic, but I will not get into that wider debate now.
Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby):
I echo whole-heartedly the remarks of the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell) about the charming speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer). It was a moving occasion for those, including myself, who grew up with Bob Cryer in Shipley to see her speaking as his successor. It is also welcome to see his son here as a Member of Parliament. My hon. Friend's speech was charming and it moved us all. It is, I am sure, an augury of an effective career in Parliament, taking up where Bob left off.
I am today breaking the habit of a parliamentary lifetime by participating in an "address and reply" debate. I have never done so before, because I have always seen such debates as an exchange of pompous platitudes. I wish to take part today, because it is a celebration of a revolution that has taken place in this country. The revolution was not of the Labour party's making. Indeed, I confess that I found our manifesto minimalist and cautious, and I said so before it was published. The revolution was made by the people who wanted, and achieved, a decisive rejection of a Government who had failed.
The people threw out a Government who had turned negative and sour over the years and become nattering nabobs of negativism, as a former Vice-President of the United States called the media. The previous Government turned a long, petty-minded sulk into a system of government. The people took the weight of that failed Government off their backs, and by so doing, they removed the block to change that that Government represented. It was a liberation carried through by the people, boosted by the vision offered by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who inspired a fairly timid Labour party campaign with the vision and enthusiasm that he projected.
As this is confession time, I admit that I went away shortly after the election. I did not acquire this tan in Cleethorpes, although the basis of it was laid canvassing
in Cleethorpes. I went away because it seemed pointless to me to sit for 10 days while the Government were being formed, waiting for the telephone not to ring. I came back to find that I am indeed part of an excluded generation--the rising-60s. To paraphrase Wordsworth in "The Prelude": "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive--but to be old was something of a disadvantage." That is the situation in which I find myself.
None the less, I rejoice in the revolution that is being carried through. I shall, of course, be a participant in furthering that revolution in the House of Commons. We are living through an exciting period, and it is exciting to see how many of the boot boys of negativism who used to occupy the Government Benches have been swept away. It is exciting to see that those who talked so much rubbish about economics and policy for so long have either gone or been humbled, and now have to sing a different song--the querulous song sung by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), the former Secretary of State for Wales, whose attack on our devolution proposals was nothing but a list. Indeed, it was a list of lists, consisting of nit-picking attempts to pick holes in those proposals.
It is wonderful to see a new start, a new mood and a sweeping away of the gloom and failure. This is a honeymoon, but a honeymoon that will last. Labour Governments usually have longer honeymoons than Conservative Governments. In 1979 the honeymoon lasted only nine weeks before the polls turned sour, whereas in 1964 our honeymoon lasted two years, as it did in 1974. This honeymoon will be even longer, because we are carrying through the wish of the people of this country for change in the system.
That is especially true in the constitutional sphere, and on the constitutional question our manifesto was at its most radical. Some of us might want to go further, but we have to begin somewhere, and we are making a powerful beginning now.
Government had become so centralised, and executive power so strongly misused by the previous Government, that it had been abused. It is characteristic of this country, with its strong executive government, that the Prime Minister and Government of the day drive a steamroller through the House of Commons. In opposition, all that one can do--it is what we have been doing for 18 years--is to heckle that steamroller.
When Baroness Thatcher drove that steamroller, she drove it straight, callously and brutally. When her successor, the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), drove it, it wandered around the countryside and we got a friendly, amiable grin from the deck--but it was a steamroller none the less.
It is time to take power, power that has been abused, from the Government and to spread it round among the people. That is what we shall do. It is extraordinary to see a party that has abused constitutional power so long and so vigorously, and been so radical in its deformation of the constitution, now presenting the image of being stand-pat opponents of change.
A radical party is suddenly reverting to traditional conservatism--but only on the constitution. It says, "Do nothing; ask your grandmother--or rather, ask your grandfather in the House of Lords--about the
constitution." But the people want change in the system, and they will get change. They want to be heard; they want to be involved. That is the basis of our constitutional changes.
Those changes mean bringing government closer to the people, and not only in Scotland and Wales. I want government to be brought closer to the English regions, too. The case for regional government in Yorkshire and Humberside is as strong as that in Scotland and Wales. The opinion surveys by the Kilbrandon commission during the previous review of the constitution showed in Yorkshire and Humberside, in the north-east as well as in the north-west, the same feeling of distance and alienation from central Government, and of neglect by them, as characterised Scotland.
Our case is strong, and it will become stronger when we see the effects of devolution in Scotland and Wales. As people there become energised by having more power over their own destiny, they will become formidable competitors in development, in attracting foot-loose industry and in providing a dynamic to their system, which will make the local government and the people in Yorkshire and Humberside want the same for our people. We must be there in the queue and our place must be guaranteed.
That is the major part of constitutional reform, and that to which we have devoted most of our attention today. However, there are others. Constitutional reform also means incorporating the European convention on human rights into the system in this country. I am delighted to see that.
"except such as is in accordance with law and is necessary in a democratic society"--
this is the important bit--
"in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."
Every one of those qualifications is a highly political concept.
"must be interpreted in an objective and dynamic manner, taking into account social conditions and developments; the ideas and conditions prevailing at the time the treaty was drafted retaining hardly any continuing validity."
A great "acquis", to use a word that infuriates my Euro-sceptic friends, is building up on European convention law. It depends on the views of judges from
33 member states throughout Europe, including parts of eastern Europe. Those views will potentially be forced on us without any opportunity for debate. I cast my bouquet to those on the Government Benches because, although I do not fully understand what is being said in "Bringing Rights Home" and it deserves further thought, the consultation document seems to assume that there will be a place for this House and the other place in the formulation of any modification to our law that might be required following an application of the convention by our courts. That is sensible. I speak personally, from the Back Benches, and I do not commit my party, but we should consider that suggestion seriously.
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