European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) Order 2009

I hope that I will be forgiven for not following too closely what has already been said in this important debate because in my opinion it has been expressed with great clarity. The Minister already has the questions, many of which arise from the sequence of reports from the Joint Committee on Human Rights. However, I hope that the Minister will animadvert, if he can, on the reflection that this debate may cast on the Government’s attitude to the scrutiny of important multilateral conventions by Parliament. I recognise that the particularity of this debate rests to some extent on the fact that it is a necessary consequence of the provisions being considered for ratification as part of the European Union processes, and consequently there is a requirement to have an order affirmatively accepted. However, there remains the question whether we could and would have contemplated ratifying the convention as a national measure binding on the United Kingdom without that feature and that, if we had, it would have led to such a debate. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lester and to the Government for availing the Committee of this opportunity, but it seems to me that a matter of this kind ought not to be discretionary, but a common matter and not one subject to a mere convention. It should be the outcome of this House and the other place, having established the propriety of a full and proper scrutiny prior to the Government finally ratifying such an important treaty. I think heard the Minister say early in his remarks that the treaty does not confer new rights. If that is correct, it modifies to some extent the position taken by the JCHR, which has indicated that where there is an evident conflict between the convention and our domestic law, we should seek to align our domestic law with the convention. Our debate about the position of the armed services indicates that there is some willingness to acknowledge that we need to go further than our domestic law presently provides to ensure that there is not an exclusion.