My Lords, I too thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, for his persistence with this, and I especially thank the Minister, for her gracious concession.
It was just a few weeks ago that the former Prime Minister Mrs May warned the Government, in another place, of what she described as the
“fine line between being popular and populist”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/3/21; col. 78.]
I wonder whether that line is quite so fine. To be more explicit than the noble and learned Lord, dog whistles are bad enough in politics, but they are a lot worse in legislation and worse still when they are by way of legislative amendment to the Human Rights Act—our modern Bill of Rights. To turn the power to consider derogation into an express statutory duty, but not to import the appropriate legal test for such a derogation, was a very dangerous dog whistle indeed. I am very glad that it has been withdrawn. Like the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, I hope that the Government continue in this positive vein and consider other fundamental concerns about the Bill in general.
I do not want to be churlish. This is an important concession from the Government; to treat the Human Rights Act in this way, and to set a precedent for creating duties to derogate and put them in the Act, would have been very dangerous and would have sent a bad signal about the Government’s commitment to human rights at home and internationally.