Video: Highlights from the Liberty Conservative Fringe
Mary Riddell was up first. Observing that the HRA was Churchill’s legacy and a bulwark against all sorts of evils she ran through the various myths and misunderstandings that surround it, taking each of them apart. There is much wrong with this country she said: housing, inequality, the economy etc. But the HRA is exempt from that category and should be a beacon for hope and justice in difficult times.
Eleanor Laing MP told the audience about her private members bill to commemorate the ancient British liberties contained in the Magna Carta. She vowed that a Conservative Government would never change the law to give people less rights.
Member of the Home Affairs Committee, Nicola Blackwood MP, explained that her personal history taught her that human rights have to be fought for. In the UK she said the concept of human rights has been so badly devalued that it is almost impossible to have a debate on human rights based on fact. She urged that the case for a legislative rights framework, which represented the basic principles of our society, needed to be more convincingly argued to win over human rights sceptics.
Characteristically unafraid to expose vested interest, Peter Oborne, began by observing how the false narrative on the HRA in certain parts of the media was driven by concern over Article 8 privacy protections and the impact on lucrative “kiss and tell” stories. Referring to “Churchill’s Legacy: the Conservative Case for the HRA”, which he co-wrote with Jesse Norman MP and launched at Tory conference in 2009, he said he was alarmed by the Home Secretary’s weekend attack on the Act. Praising Theresa May for her record in office so far, he warned that the temptation to make “populist remarks” on the eve of conference should be resisted. Describing himself as “on the Eurosceptic side” he challenged the Home Secretary on how scrapping the HRA would return sovereignty, pointing out that it would instead pass power from British to Strasbourg judges. He also challenged the moral position of the Government on the Article 3 prohibition on torture: “They would rather send terror suspects back to torture. I would rather put them on trial here.”
The Attorney General, Rt Hon Dominic Grieve QC MP, said that statutory protections against an over mighty State were crucial. He pointed to both the value and the shortcomings of the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and the common law in protecting rights. In his view the HRA and the ECHR weren’t perfect but he said he would “defy any right thinking person to disagree with their values”. While the HRA might excite problems “these were superficial in the scheme of things compared with the benefits that come”.
Trailed in the weekend papers, the Home Secretary’s attack on the HRA was then spun as the red meat of her conference speech today. This time the charge is that the Act allows dangerous foreign criminals to play the system and avoid deportation. Not true. The strength of Article 8 is that all relevant factors will be weighed in the balance when a person’s deportation is being considered: the threat they pose, the seriousness of their offence, how long they have been in the UK, whether they have genuine and longstanding family ties etc. Is it not right that the courts consider the rights of children who have no control over whether their parents have committed offences? Or that someone who has been in the UK almost since birth has their family connections taken into account?
But as with so many areas of HRA reporting, many of the stories are misrepresented or fabricated. It is for example utter nonsense that a Bolivian man was allowed to stay because he had a cat. And what you don’t hear from the Home Office is that with many of these headline-grabbing cases, it is administrative error and delay which has ultimately prevented deportation. Often, the family ties that mean that someone should be allowed to stay have only been developed long after an offence was committed. You don’t need to tamper with Churchill’s legacy to ensure that those who pose a risk and have no right to be here should not be allowed to stay. More efficiency in the system would safeguard against this. Sadly - that doesn’t make for such an eye-catching conference story.
