My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendments 14A, 20A and 25A in this group, which stand in my name. I apologise for the absence of my noble friend Lord Bowness, who has put his name to a number of amendments but cannot be here because of weather conditions. He has asked me to apologise to your Lordships for his absence.
The purpose of the three amendments standing in my name is to ensure that the terms of the charter, if incorporated into domestic law, are capable of amendment by Parliament. This may be implied by the other amendments, but I think not. I listened very carefully to the noble and learned Lord. While there is a capacity to remedy deficiencies by regulation, there is no capacity to enable Parliament to mount a careful scrutiny and amendment of the charter. Therefore, the purpose of my amendments is to make it explicit that the charter, if incorporated into domestic law, is subject to parliamentary scrutiny and amendment.
I do not want to say very much by way of a general justification for the need to incorporate the charter; I am conscious that the noble and learned Lord who has spoken has much greater expertise than I. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, will probably speak. He, too, has much greater knowledge of this than I. I am but a journeyman lawyer and I have never had to wrestle with the charter’s significance in domestic terms. However, I noticed last week in the Times that Professor Bogdanor made a very powerful case for not scrapping the rights. The important thing that your Lordships need to keep in mind is that the charter provides a number of rights and remedies not found elsewhere in our domestic law. That point was made by the noble and learned Lord.
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I am deeply concerned at the growing strength of what I regard as the extremes of political debate on the left and right of the spectrum. It seems that the centre ground, where I have always tried to position myself, is giving way and is in retreat, and I believe that we need all the reinforcement we can get. Some of your Lordships will know that my father wrote about the elective dictatorship—a view that I have always shared. I do not believe and have never believed that Parliament is a sufficient protection for the rights and liberties of the citizen. If a political party is captured by extreme elements, is elected into office and can retain the loyalty of its MPs, it can do very much what it pleases. The damage that could be done to our rights and liberties in short order could be very great and might be irreversible. That is why most sophisticated democracies—in this context the United States is probably the most significant—have incorporated protection for rights and liberties in Bills of rights. The charter, if incorporated into domestic law, would go some way to fill the void. It goes beyond the rights and protections afforded by the European convention, as the noble and learned Lord rightly said.
Perhaps I may give a concrete example that may trouble your Lordships. As I understand the policy of Mr Corbyn and his colleagues, it is to nationalise a number of public services and utilities, and he asserts that this can be done at nil cost. This implies either no compensation for the owners of the assets or compensation that is calculated in a wholly derisory way so as to produce nothing or near to nothing.