Conservative Party Conference 2011
Liberty Fringe event 'Leading by Example?' chaired by Shami Chakrabarti, guests speakers: Nicola Blackwood MP, Eleanor Laing MP, Rt Hon Dominic Grieve QC MP and Attorney General, Peter Oborne (Chief Political Commentator - The Daily Telegraph), Mary Riddell (Columnist - The Daily Telegraph)
*FULL TRANSCRIPT*
Shami Chakrabarti (Director of Liberty):
Welcome everybody to Liberty, the National Council for Civil Liberties, and our Conservative Conference Fringe event 2011. It is so wonderful to see so many people here.
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Is there ever a danger, I ask, of talking up human rights over there and forgetting how important they are over here? Yes, important in an Arab Spring, but equally important in an Indian summer here in the United Kingdom.
Mary Riddell (Columnist -- The Daily Telegraph):
The Human Rights Act is not, I put to you, a threat to Liberty, but a charter for victims based on the efforts by conservative forces to ensure that the individual can never again be shackled by the oppressive state. We would lose that protection at our peril. Thank you.
Eleanor Laing MP:
You will never find a Conservative Government, or even a Conservative Coalition, changing the law in today's young United Kingdom, which will give a decent law abiding person living in the UK - whether or not of UK nationality or not - anyone in this country, less rights than they deserve.
Nicola Blackwood MP:
But it is almost impossible in some quarters to have any kind of debate on human rights, as opposed to civil liberties, that is based on fact and not on populist myth.
Peter Oborne (Chief Political Commentator - The Daily Telegraph):
If you look at a media constructed story about the Human Rights Act, and it often makes you really feel very angry indeed when you do so, there's an amazing thing - if you check it out, and you look into it, it's almost always based on false premises which just isn't true.
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There is a false narrative about Human Rights in the British media, and there is a very, rather sinister reason for it, which is that the Human Rights Act, although it has many good things going for it, it isn't necessarily very good for the newspapers because of the rights of privacy. Now that is an issue which we all have to think about. But to what extent are we able as a community and as newspapers to intrude into the private lives of public figures and private people?
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I wonder whether or not the media argument against the Human Rights Act is not driven by a venal private interest. I think that is something which needs to be considered and is hardly ever mentioned because the debate does take place in the media and so many newspapers don't declare their very, very clear interest in this matter.
Rt Hon Dominic Grieve QC MP and Attorney General:
That then brings me to the Human Rights Act and the European Convention. Are they perfect documents? No, not at all - they're no more perfect than the Magna Carta was. They have plenty of flaws in them. They were in the case of the European Convention on Human Rights, drawn up, and there was a lot of compromise involved in the process by which it came in, although I have to say, most of the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights are of the kind of that I really defy any right-thinking person to conceivably disagree with.
But the fact that we have a system for their enforcement, either through the Strasbourg Court, or here domestically through the Human Rights Act, clearly gives rise to areas of tension where people may legitimately complain that the rights appear to go far too much to the generally undeserving, because actually the generally deserving are pretty well protected by these rights and they'd only notice it if the rights vanished completely.
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Tory Totty, Nicola Blackwood's Maiden Speech, June 7thby THEDAILYP0LITICS2,789 views
Peter Oborne gives the weakest opposition against the HRA I think I've ever heard. If it's in the public interest then there is no issue that he may "pry" where there just cause, even a legal cause, but otherwise he trips over every word against it.
smartverity 4 months ago