My Lords, if I may, I will give another non-legal observation. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, whose speech I agree with—and how very eloquent it was.
It is a regret of mine to live in an age which is so much obsessed with human rights and so little concerned with human responsibilities. Saving their presence, I rather think that the spiritual Bench below me might reflect on how little it has succeeded in teaching the parable of the good Samaritan and similar stories. Collectively, those stories almost do away on their own with the provisions of the absurd CFR. My point is that the good Samaritan behaved as he did of his own
volition, not because he was told to by a bunch of lawyers and professional politicians. We tend to look at social problems through the wrong end of the telescope: we need a change of culture, not another set of often duplicated rights.
Specifically, as has been mentioned, the charter is EU-specific and EU-centric. It would therefore need extensive retailoring to fit in with our own laws. To a layman, a major defect—as again has been mentioned—of placing CFR into UK law is that it would empower courts to disapply Acts of Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, tried to deal with this, but he did not deal with it accurately; I will, however, leave that to other lawyers. To disapply a law is different from us changing a law when it comes onto our statute book in due process. It strikes me as inevitable that such a move would conflict with the Human Rights Act, the ECHR, our own common law or all three.
The charter has come in for criticism over the years from Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, the noble Lord, Lord Hain—who is, sensibly, not in his place—and, most notably, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith. It was also eloquently attacked by my right honourable friend Kenneth Clarke. Why was there a change of heart? It was never explained before, and I look forward to hearing why there is a change of heart now.
Some of the provisions are so woolly and aspirational as to render them unsuitable and even dangerous if incorporated into our own law. They include the right to respect for physical and mental integrity and the right to pursue an occupation and a guarantee of a high level of environmental protection. Those are not the sort of things that ought to appear in this sort of document. Such vagueness is surely an invitation to what has been described as judicial adventurism in the courts.
I have no intention, of course, of putting in jeopardy the livelihood of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, although I strongly disagree with him that his amendment adds certainty. The charter mounts to virtue signalling on an industrial scale. Governments need to govern, not to rehearse constantly how virtuous they are. It is time that we destroyed this amendment and voted it down.