European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-26
Topic: Civil Rights
Richard Keen (Conservative, Centre-right): I entirely agree with the noble Lord as to what this Bill is about. With regard to the charter, the point is that it does not bring anything over on its own. We already have these rights and obligations, as established by the principles of EU law, convention law and the common law As to a concern that something is omitted at the end of the day, as I indicated, we would address that to ensure that all rights are brought across. However, with great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, I do not believe that you can never have too many belts and braces. If you have too many belts and braces, eventually you cannot stand up. It is therefore important that we approach this issue with a degree of proportionality, if I may use a European term Following on from the point I made earlier, retaining the charter for what will become a fluid and changing category of law risks legislatively binding us to a document that would bring the illusion of clarity in the short term but serve only to undermine it in the longer term. Indeed, the other amendments in this group raise similar issues to those put forward by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith My noble friend Lord Hailsham has tabled amendments that seek to build on the amendments put forward by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith. They seek to assign the status of primary legislation to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. For reasons that we will go into in a later group, the Government believe that the question of assigning status to retained EU law is complex and should be approached with caution. I hope that we can come back to this question when we have concluded our debate on the approach to rights protection and to status more generally. I will not seek to take up time on that issue at this stage I suspect that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, would also add to the confusion. Seeking to afford charter rights the same level of protection as convention rights under the Human Rights Act 1998 is fraught with difficulty. Charter rights do not correspond exactly to ECHR rights and apply in different ways. The charter also contains non-justiciable principles as well as rights, and it is unclear what status these would have in domestic law under his amendment. Moreover, it does not deal with how explanations to the charter articles should be treated or how certain sections of the Human Rights Act would apply to charter rights. I appreciate that we are in Committee and that the noble Lord is entitled to say that he will look more carefully at the form of the amendment and perhaps elaborate upon it in due course, but there are fundamental difficulties with the approach he is attempting to take in simply trying to incorporate the charter when, as indeed the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, himself observed, the expression of rights in the charter does not coincide precisely with the expression of rights in the convention I would like to emphasise again that we remain committed to listening to this House and indeed to working constructively to ensure that we have a functioning statute book which maximises legal certainty. I understand the concerns expressed by some about whether some rights would somehow be left behind, but if we can and do identify a risk of such rights being left behind, we are entirely open to the proposition that we have to address that by way of amendment to the Bill, and we will seek to do that. I wish to reassure noble Lords on that point.