 Thank you. The final item of business today is a member's business debate on motion number 13562 in the name of Christina McKelvie on a human rights thing. Keep the human rights act. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. waith members wish to speak in the debate, please press the request butters as soon as possible, and can I warn members that I notice that time is extremely tight, so can I call on Christina McKelvie to open the debate? I thank all my colleagues across the chamber who signed the motion to allow us to debate this very important issue today. I thank Amnesty International, SCVO, HRCS, The Read Foundation, the Scottish Human Rights Commission and many other organisations who have helped us with understanding this process and given us some input into how they see this piece of work shaping up. On the Magna Cater went viral on 12.15, while there were 13 copies made, complete the spelling mistakes, though they were blissfully unaware of LOL and the potential for tweeting the document. The Magna Cater, unlike the declaration of our growth, which enshrined the rights of Scotland's sovereign people, enshrined the rights of the barons of the time. It was, though still, a bill of rights in its limited sense. The Prime Minister was happy to tear it up in its 800th anniversary, Speaks, of his approach to human rights, even those of his barons. He has, of course, displayed something similar and completely failing to recognise the rights of hundreds of thousands of refugees to give them safety across Europe. I listened to a wee bit of the Westminster debate this afternoon and I have to say that I was not very much enthralled by it. While Germany happily absorbs 800,000 people, David Cameron stands back and under pressure says well, we might take a thousand or so from the camps but we are not taking anyone who has jumped the queue, as one of Nigel Farage's acolytes put it. That arrogant selfish lack of the remotest, compassionate or even simple empathy for the family of island curdie, as his small three-year-old body was carried out of the sea, brought anger and distress across Europe. Public outcry has been such that even David Cameron, who admits he hasn't a clue about the price of bread, had to back down a bit more than he would have liked. It might even upset some of his backbenchers that he will have to take some desperate people from the refugee camps. According to David Cameron, King John was outrageous bully and it was the brave barons that sat him down, gave him a jolly good talk into and asked him to seal the document. Good on them. We should all stand up to bullies wherever we see them, whether that's in the school playground or indeed in the House of Commons. We need to stand together to fight the kind of right-wing extremist messages that are infiltrating our communities and terrifying our towns and cities with their messages of hate and blame. Amnesty's drive to do the right thing is about exactly this. This campaign, to save the human rights act, demands that the Westminster Government is stopped from bullying the very citizens who put it into power. This is yet another one of those arenas in Scotland where we get a double whammy. We can't decide to hold on to it for ourselves and we can't stop it from being passed by David Cameron's Government and so being subjected to the loss of our human rights. We are, in other words, being bullied. Our Scottish Parliament, Presiding Officer, as you know, has its foundations in human rights legislation but there seems to be no thought as to the impact on how this place, with cognisance of its human rights, formulates its policy. It's something that I'm extremely proud of. It's something that's fareddied through the Scotland Act and something that we should all be extremely proud of. That is why Amnesty's campaign is so very, very important. Scrapping the human rights act would be a dangerously retrograde step that could put us all under threat of tyranny. As Alan Hogarth, head of the advocacy and programmes at Amnesty, succinctly puts it, and I quote, "...human rights are not a gift to be bestowed upon us by monarchs, barons or democratically elected politicians even. They are ours to be treasured and protected. It is not up to them to decide who and who is not entitled to human rights. The human part of this is universal." He continued, "...if the Prime Minister is sincere about protecting human rights in the UK and is proud of the Magna Carter's legacy, he should stop attacking the human rights act and think about how he can ensure how we all have equal access to justice." The people spoke out and the Tory Government had to listen. As we were preparing for the juggernaut of a bill that would scrap it, suddenly we were being told that there was to be a consultation not a bill. Ordinary people refused to be bullied by this Government, but make no mistake, dumping the human rights act and withdrawn completely from ECHR is still a live option. It hasn't gone away. People tend to concentrate on the human rights act importance for refugees, for those who are being tortured, threatened or trafficked, but in fact its impact reverberates through far more lives than knows at the front line of conflict situation. I give you Jan, an MS sufferer, believed her lack of care support and friendship to her human rights as an individual. Studying the legislation, she says, helped me to feel stronger, strong enough to search for the support to challenge my local council and she won not only the additional support but a sense of her own worth that she had lost over time. Without the act in place, what would have happened to Jan? Do you think that she would have managed to get more support? Getting rid of the obligation to treat people as human beings is another handy backdoor way to save money. Welfare reform already includes the erosion of human rights. Can you bear to imagine what might happen if we lacked the ultimate security of the ECHR? Are families, possibly families, stuck in domestic violence? A woman who is stalked and abused by a violent partner surely has the right to be able to escape with her children? That right is enshined in the human rights act. The act makes it safe to be gay, that is still illegal and could lead to execution in 78 countries in this world. Thanks in large part to the ECHR and the human rights act in the UK, our rights to be treated is equal, with equal access to protection, regardless of gender, sexality, race, age, or all protected by law. The struggle for equal rights has been significantly advanced by laws by campaign groups and by trade unions. The frightening thought that the UK might withdraw from the EU and remove up from us protections as crucial as this is yet another solid reason for Scotland to retain its integrity and its compassion by staying in Europe. Laws have always viewed the right to civil liberty as fundamental. Our history in the trade union movement and people such as Kear Cardi is testament to that set of values. Today, Presiding Officer, the UK Government announced that it will repeal the human rights act and will bring forward a bill of rights. So it is time. It is time now. Let us all back and restays do the right thing campaign when enough people speak, Governments listen. Thank you. Many people want to speak, so can I just advise members that you should take no more than four minutes, Kenny MacAskill, followed by Malcolm Chisholm? Presiding Officer, can I thank Christina McKelvie for bringing this? It is an important issue that we have to discuss, especially today. The Human Rights Act can bring challenges to Governments and other public and private institutions, but that is rightly so. I myself require to deal with the consequences of the CADR decision, but we accepted it as an administration, albeit that I have to say that we were probably rather begrudging about it. However, it is important that we have the ability for decisions to be challenged and not simply to be put upon people. In every democracy, there requires to be the separation of powers. There requires to be this Government that is held to account as the executive by the wider Parliament, and equally there requires to be a legislator to whom you can go if you have queries or indeed feel that either Parliament or Government are acting beyond or outwith their powers or failing to act appropriately. That is how it should be in all democracies. Even the United States, a country that sometimes I and others in this chamber would challenge, sees court decisions as fundamental to the defence of the constitution. There have been many areas in which the United States has seen the court overturn the legislator and the executive to protect the rights of their citizens. It should be no less in this country, and indeed it has been no less in this country with people able to go on a variety of reasons or grounds to take issue with actions by Government or institutions in the courts. I accept that the Conservatives are being driven not so much by a desire to abolish human rights. They accept the willingness to impose a UK Bill of Rights. It is more their antipathy towards ECHR to Europe in particular that sees them driving this forward. I do believe that a UK Bill of Rights would be no substitute for what is an international institution, what is accepted by almost all right-minded countries. It would be important that we should remain part of the mainstream, not simply by being a member of the European Union, which is a separate political action, but also by subscribing to ECHR and accepting the right of the European Court to hold the Government, Scottish or UK to account. That is about the rights of citizens being able to challenge those who are much more powerful or in much more privileged positions. There is a great deal of obsession in the media about crime. That, after all, is one of the things that helps to sell tabloid newspapers and many of the major challenges that we have faced in Scotland and the UK have been related to criminal justice. I did mention the Canada issue, but it is much wider and broader than that, as Christina McKelvie correctly said. It is about the rights of citizens, whether it is on mental health, whether it is on access to legal aid, whether it is a whole gamut of other aspects, so it is important. Equally, if we were to see withdrawal from the Human Rights Act, then it does put Scotland in limbo, given its constitutional position in the very founding document of this party, and it would leave the UK isolated along with North Korea and other countries that do not seek to be part of the mainstream world. That is why we should and must preserve the Human Rights Act and remain signed up to ECHR. It would though perhaps be remiss of me not to take the opportunity to have a sting in the tail to say that, in championing the human rights, I do think that it is important that the Scottish Government should take cognisance of both ECHR and the decisions of the European Court on the right of prisoners to vote. It would be no small step to make sure that we got on the right side of the European courts. It is perhaps something that we should think about as well as justising the Tory Government for its actions and as it proposes to do. I congratulate Christina McKelvie on bringing forward this important motion. I agree with what she said at the start of her speech about refugees, but also more generally about the importance of the Human Rights Act in protecting fundamental liberties and holding power to account. Of course, the actual Human Rights Act was passed by the Labour Government in 1998, and what it was seeking to do was to ensure that people who wanted to take a case previously to the human court of human rights could, from 1990 onwards, take their case to the domestic court. Obviously, the UK Government is seeking to abolish that aspect of ECHR, but my understanding is that it also wants to have the right to veto ECHR more generally, and that would require it to depart from ECHR from the Council of Europe. Some people even argue from the EU, although I do not think that that would necessarily follow. I think that the Conservatives also want to limit human rights coverage to the most serious cases and deny people human rights if they are not deemed to have made a positive contribution to the UK. Those are very significant changes. Although I reminded people that it was the Labour Government in 1998 that brought in the Human Rights Act, it was actually a Conservative Government in the early 1950s who was very keen on the ECHR. Churchill was keen on it, and I think that it was a Conservative MP, Maxwell Fife, who was very instrumental in the drawing up of the ECHR. That is a new departure for the Conservative Party to be challenging fundamental rights in this way. I know that there are quite a few Conservative MPs in the UK Parliament who are not happy about that, and part of my grounds for optimism is that they may rebel, but my other ground for optimism is that abolishing the Human Rights Act requires the consent of this Parliament. We have a very important role to play in protecting the human rights act and ECHR more generally. It has made groundbreaking judgments on a wide range of issues that help the UK to become a more progressive society. I think that, to those who criticise some of the judgments, we should emphasise how many of those judgments have actually helped some of the most vulnerable people in society, for example protecting older and disabled people who are receiving care. Other examples are that it has helped victims of rape through the police for failing to act on their complaints and has also helped social services to account for not doing enough to stop child abuse. Of course, it is not just the vulnerable who are protected by it, it also helps to protect the freedom of the press, which I am sure we all believe in, and has also, for example, defended the rights of servicemen and women to have the right equipment when they are serving overseas. I strongly support the amnesty campaign launched in April, which urges people to do the human rights thing and protect the act. The amnesty campaign uses examples to highlight the real impact that the Human Rights Act has had. It also has a petition. It has nearly 100,000 signatures. People can add their names to that at www.savetheact.uk. It is powerful the examples that amnesty give in their campaign. I have given some general examples already, but it is important to remind people who are critical of the act exactly what it has meant in practice. For example, a woman with multiple sclerosis who was forced to spend all day every day in bed was able to use the Human Rights Act to get her local council to increase the amount of care that she received. She received a second example that she gave an elderly couple who were placed in separate care homes after 65 years of marriage. They were able to use the Human Rights Act to successfully persuade their local authority to allow the woman to move into her husband's care home. I have other examples, but I can see that my time is running out. We only need to glance abroad to the crisis, whether in Syria or Gaza or in other places, or look to the horror being faced by refugees on the shores of the EU, to recognise just how precious our human rights are and how we must fight for them. We must fight for the human rights of others, and we must face down any attempt to withdraw those rights in the UK. Margaret Mitchell is not a new subject having been covered in topical questions and other debates. However, I thank Christina McElvie for tabling that motion and providing me with the opportunity to set the record straight regarding the UK Government's proposal to put the European Convention of Human Rights into a British Bill of Rights. Britain has a proud tradition of upholding human rights and played a significant role in drafting the European Convention on Human Rights, which was enacted in 1953. That represented a historic and groundbreaking codification of the rights that all humans should expect to enjoy. In June this year, the UK Government confirmed that it would bring forward proposals, including a public consultation on replacing the 1998 Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights. Since then, much political capital has been made about this proposal. It is unfortunate that Amnesty International's campaign, in seeking to ensure that the Human Rights Act is not repealed, infers that British citizens will suddenly lose their right to life, right to education, right to marriage, liberty, property and so the list goes on. Despite the acknowledgement from the then justice minister, Roseanna Cunningham, that the precise implications of the repeal of the Human Rights Act would depend on the detail of the repealing legislation. Let's be quite clear. By repealing the Human Rights Act, the UK Government is not proposing to abolish human rights. Instead, it is proposing to uphold them in a way that reflects the values of those living in the UK by ensuring the interpretation of the European Convention Rights Lies with UK Judges. That addresses concerns over the so-called mission creep of the European Court. A recent case in point being the European Court's decision that life imprisonment for the most serious, violent offenders should not be allowed on the basis that it amounts to inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment, regardless of the severity of the crime. Another example is the European Court's decision on the rights of prisoners to vote, already alluded to by Kenny McCaskill. That was a decision that our now First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, recognised as problematic when she disagreed and said, people who commit crimes and are sent to jail do not get to vote. I do not believe that a good case has been made for changing that situation. However, Presiding Officer, I consider it only fair to pound out the irony of so much political capital being made about the supposed adverse effects of the proposed Bill of Rights when the Scottish Government has allowed potential human rights abuses to continue on its own watch on issues for which it has complete devolved competence. The so-called consensual stop and search by police in Scotland, with thousands of people, including children, have been searched without knowing that they had a right to refuse, is evident of this infringement of human rights here. To put it in perspective, rather than raising this topic repeatedly when nothing further has happened since the initial announcement last year, the Scottish Government should instead concentrate on making sure that devolved issues over which it has competence are not the subject of the infringement of human rights here in Scotland. I again thank the member for bringing this debate and allowing me to set the record straight. I congratulate Christina McKelvie for securing a debate on what is an important issue. Although the UK Conservative Government would have his belief that the Human Rights Act undermines the sovereignty of Parliament and the independence of our courts, it goes far beyond the UK obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights. It talks of the European Court of Human Rights being afflicted by mission creep, and it is determined to abolish the act and propose replacing it, as we know, with a British Bill of Rights and responsibilities. It has already admitted that the new Bill of Rights would only apply to the most serious cases. Which of our human rights are not serious? What is a trivial breach of human rights? Their plans go on to state that it would, in a quote, limit the reach of human rights cases to the UK so that British armed forces overseas are not subject to persistent human rights claims that undermine their ability to do their job and keep us safe. That would set a dangerous precedent surly. Human rights are not something to opt in and opt out of, and as a Liberal Democrat, I firmly believe that human rights are universal. In this week of all weeks, when David Cameron has been found so wanting in his Government's response to the refugee crisis, why would anyone even contemplate allowing them to tamper with the hard-won freedoms set out in the convention and in the Human Rights Act. Amnesty International's campaign, Do the Human Rights Thing, focuses on saving the act, and I strongly support its campaign and the work done by Amnesty International on the issue. The Human Rights Act compels us to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, and let us not forget that, as others have said, both of those documents were drafted by UK lawyers. Both are fully reflective of British values. They are not, as some might want us to believe, foreign dictate that allows criminals and terrorists to act with impunity, avoid punishment or exploit loopholes. On the contrary, it protects the most vulnerable in our society. It has helped to keep families together by ensuring care homes and local authorities keep elderly married couples together, the protection of our right to family life. It has helped to secure proper support from local authorities for those with a disability. It has protected the rights of LGBT people home and abroad, and it protects day in and day out the dignity of some of our most marginalised citizens. Furthermore, the Scrapping of Human Rights Act, as others have said, would cause very specific legal issues relating to us sitting in devolved parliaments. The act is hardwired into the devolution settlements here in Wales and in Northern Ireland, and the Good Friday agreement was achieved in part thanks to the assurances provided by the Human Rights Act. The Conservatives have admitted that if their proposed bill of rights and responsibilities were not accepted by the international community, the UK would be forced out of the convention, so abolishing the Human Rights Act and leaving the convention would put us in the same club as Belarus, often dubbed the last dictatorship of Europe. To walk away from the human rights act and the convention would undermine our ability for us to ask other countries to respect the rights of their citizens. It would send that damaging message that the UK does not respect their international obligations, so why should anyone else? It was only the presence of Liberal Democrats in the last UK Government that prevented the Conservatives from abolishing the Human Rights Act earlier. Unfortunately, the Conservatives are now in a position to jeopardise the rights that we hold dear. I support this motion and Amnesty International's campaign, and I will work with colleagues around the chamber to do the human right thing. As Amnesty has said, we cannot let the UK Government turn universal freedoms into privileges for a chosen few. I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate, and I commend Christina McKelvie for bringing it to the chamber. As others have already indicated, it is perhaps hard to remember that in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Conservative politicians of the day were proponents of the European Convention of Human Rights, but they recognised the need to move forward in Europe and not to move backwards. Even though, in the case of David Maxwell V, who Malcolm Chesham has already referred to, he would perhaps have been surprised at the extent to which the convention has moved forward in relation to matters of sexual morality. Last or to Conservative plans to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights were announced, together with a move to stop the UK courts having to take account of Strasbourg jurisprudence. Since the election in May, Conservatives have reiterated that commitment, and we now seem to be moving on towards a consultation. However, why are those proposals worrying? The Human Rights Act is the act that sets out the fundamental rights and freedoms that everyone in Scotland and in the UK has access to. Those rights and freedoms are, of course, based on the convention. According to that act, all public authorities must respect those rights and freedoms, including prisons, police officers and councils, and an essential mechanism to protecting our rights and freedoms. Scotland has a long and rich tradition of upholding human rights and freedoms. Even the Scottish Government's recent commitment to accept a fair and proportionate number of refugees in Scotland in the wake of the European refugee crisis is a fine example of that commitment to those who have no rights in their own countries. Furthermore, the Human Rights Act is, of course, at the heart of Scottish legislation. Any withdrawal from the act under the civil convention may have implications for the devolved settlement. The Conservative Party, as we know, has only one MP in Scotland—only one representative out of 59 committed to those proposals. I urge the Conservatives to think carefully about the wider implications of this move. They simply have no mandate to tamper with Scotland's long and rich commitment to human rights. I am sure that my SNP colleagues and, indeed, Liberal and Labour representatives Westminster and at Holyrood will continue to oppose Tory proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act. Furthermore, it is quite indicative that several charity organisations and groups including the SCVO and the Health and Social Care Alliance have highlighted their concerns about the potential risks associated with repealing the act. Even those in David Cameron's own party have voiced opposition to the UK Government's plans to repeal the act, including, of course, David Davis and Ken Clark, among others. For all the talk of bad decisions on prisoners' right to vote, with both Westminster and the Scottish Parliament taking the view that prisoners should not have the right to vote, when it came to it in February this year, at the court, to the disappointment of some lawyers, no doubt, the European Court decided that UK prisoners barred from voting were not entitled to compensation. My suspicion is that the British Bill of Rights will be equal to an English Bill of Rights, which would fail to take into account the needs and interests of the people of Scotland. Indeed, in the Conservative proposals published in October, apart from a small reference to the claim of writer 1689, you could be forgiven for thinking that Scotland did not exist at all. I think that we are right to be fearful of a British Bill of Rights, particularly in relation to social rights, and I think that we can be certain that it will severely contain anything that might look to be a right to economic assistance, to housing or welfare. Presiding Officer, I would like to conclude by referring to the possible constitutional crisis that Tory proposals will cause, because in the views and some commentators, Michael Pinto-Duchinsky, Scotland and the UK risk being forced out of the convention altogether. In his view, you cannot leave the jurisdiction of the court without also rejecting the convention. There is also a problem in the view of a commentator, Professor Francesca Clug, in terms of the UK's continued membership of the European Union. In her view, you cannot adhere to the convention and you need to adhere to the convention to be a member of the European Union. No doubt, for Tory Eurosceptics, that is grand, but, for more considered voices, I would suggest that we do not do it. Presiding Officer, I congratulate Christina McKelvie on securing this debate. It is a very appropriate topic for debate, because the human rights of millions of people in Syria and across the Middle East and North Africa are threatened to the extent that they have had to flee their countries of origin and seek asylum elsewhere. Of course, there has been an outpouring of humanitarian response in Europe to the horrific experiences of our fellow human beings. While we compare our situations to theirs, it is also worth reflecting on how the European Convention on Human Rights, drafted way back in 1950 in the aftermath of the Second World War, protects those of us fortunate enough to live in Council of Europe member states from the atrocities that others suffer. As a Scottish Labour member, I am proud that it was one of the first actions of the incoming Labour Government in 1997 to incorporate ECHR into domestic law. I am pleased therefore to fully endorse Amnesty International's campaign to the human right thing, raising awareness of the importance of the act and the threat that is currently proposed by the UK Government's intention to repeal it and replace it with a so-called British Bill of Rights. It is a Bill of Rights, not a Bill of Human Rights, which is proposed. Professor Alan Miller, chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, warned in October last year that, quote, human rights laws have often benefited us in ways that we do not always realise. Here in the UK they are being used to expose fatal failures in hospitals and care homes and to challenge the unfair impact of the bedroom tax. From protecting soldiers in battle to challenging prison conditions that have no place in a decent society, the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights provides a safety net for everyone. Why, therefore, would the UK Government wish to remove that safety net and risk expulsion from the European Convention? A clue to that is the way in which the original announcement by Chris Grayling, Justice Secretary at the time, was greeted by delighted headlines and right-wing tabloids trumpeting so-called British values and removing the authority of meddling European judges. Those same publications had for years reported human rights as only benefiting, in their view, bad people such as offenders and others that they considered to be undesirables. Theresa May herself contributed to this in 2011 by her unfounded story at her conference about an illegal immigrant being allowed to stay in the country because he had a cat. Organisations such as SCHR, the Amnesty International campaign presents the other important side of the argument. Mocomtism has already referred to the vulnerable elderly couple who would have been separated when he was admitted to a care home because he didn't fit the criteria for that home. Their human rights to family life have now been respected. The women fleeing domestic violence with their children accused of making her children intentionally homeless and threatened with the removal of those children, are family now rehoused because their human rights were recognised. Rape victims no longer subjected to cross-examination by their attackers. The journalist who appealed to the European Court and permitted not to reveal his source on the takeover of our company in order that the information that he had obtained from that source could be provided in the public interest. Yes, human rights approach can force us to focus on issues that are controversial. We discussed, one, the age of criminal responsibility at the justice committee this morning. Issues such as the rights of prisoners to vote or the physical punishment of children can provoke instinctive responses. ECHR and the human rights act have forced us to consider the difficult issues more deeply and more thoughtfully. Repeal of the human rights act would be a deeply retrograde step, and I wish Amnesty International every success in its campaign to make the Conservative Government think again. John Finnie, followed by Christian Allan. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I also congratulate Christina McKelvie for a timely debate, but then I always think that it is timely to discuss human rights. I would like to thank everyone for the briefings. I declare my membership of Amnesty and indicate my support for the Do The Right Thing campaign. I alluded before to a meeting that I attended of the Highland Senior Citizens Network as part of the SNAP process, where it would have been as part of civil society being consulted on how we should go about dealing with our human rights there and embedding them. The chair, a very respected individual, acknowledged that he had no previous experience of human rights. In fact, many of the people there wonder about the relevance to them, but as it became a part due to their very positive work in relation to the quality of care that was provided with care homes, the dignity of residents, issues such as hydration, mobility, bed sores, medication privacy, they really fully understood the need for a rights-based approach. That is in line with what Amnesty told us in their briefing that the human rights act is for the most vulnerable, but they also said that it guarantees important rights for everyone living in the UK. I think that relevance is the key to this. We are having this debate because of an erosion of respect for individuals, and that has been part of a concerted campaign. I would say that a neoliberal campaign, indeed mission creep is how I would describe it. That is reflected in policies that attack the poor and the vulnerable, undermine hard for workplace terms and conditions, and brought about a discussion about deserving recipients of public support. Everyone is deserving of the protection of human rights, I would say. Of course, we have, and again we make no apology for repeating a UK Prime Minister who talked about slaying the health and safety monster. The highest levels of cleanliness must apply in their hospitals, and I speak as a proud son of a hospital cleaner. That is about the dignity of patients, their wellbeing, fundamental rights, human rights and health and safety. If we make those links to practical things, it makes sense to the debate to a lot of people. The human rights act has consistently proved its value by providing an essential safeguarding area such as protecting older and disabled people who are receiving care. We have heard that consistently throughout the debate here. Can I commend the Equality and Human Rights Commission for not just for their work, but for their very diplomatic phrasiology that they use in relation to the situation that we find ourselves in? Scotland's devolution settlement is directly tied to the Human Rights Act and ECHR. Any change to our human rights framework would have to take careful account of the implications for the UK's wider constitutional architecture. I am someone who seeks an independent Scotland, but I am not going to revel in to highlight the difference here. I want the highest standards to apply across these islands, regardless of our constitutional arrangements. I would like one very clear message to come from this debate, that that is what everyone wants, not just within these islands but beyond. I commend the work of the UK's three national human rights institutions working together to pursue that. There was a time when the UK was admired as a place of sanctuary, and I have to say that that reputation has been sullied of late. I want to see it as not being complacent. It is no need to be complacent in Scotland about issues such as gypsy travellers, stock and searches being alluded to or votes being alluded to. The UK has an opportunity to show that it has a heart and a heart that has regard for human rights, and I hope that it will take that approach and do the right thing with regard to the debate. I would like to add my thanks to Christina McKelvie regarding taking this debate to the chamber today. It is very important. Like John Finnie just said, it is very timely. It is very timely why. Margaret Mitchell maybe does not know about it, but the Tory plans to scrap the Human Rights Act was confirmed in Parliament today, and the consultation will come forward. I think it comes from the Conservative Justice Minister who said that the bill will give the UK Supreme Court supremacy of the European Court of Human Rights and give a greater respect to the restrictive role for honourable members in this place, being the place at Westminster. So it is very timely and it is very important that we have the debate today. Again, I thank Christina McKelvie to break in there. I look forward to have a lot more debates about it, because I think that the presenting officer is very, very important that we talk about human rights in different terms that the Conservatives are talking about. John Finnie talked about a neoliberal campaign. It might be right, I think that Mr Schulzism talked about as well about the many Conservatives in the past who were very much guardians of our human rights. I don't think the Conservatives today are very much in the same kind of vein or the same kind of place that the predecessors were. To a certain extent, I think we are in a different place altogether and we are in a different place on the language used and it is so, so important. I think that Christina McKelvie started with talking about the refugee crisis that we have just now and we can see that our language is so important in a debate as important as human rights. We want to focus on that language and making sure that we have more and more debates about it and that politicians have a responsibility, so are the media, to make sure that we talk about a positive language when we talk about human rights. Human rights are good things for the people of Britain, just like we are for everybody who lives in Britain or if outside Britain, because we are not British rights or Labour rights, even if Labour introduced the human rights at 1998, everybody is right. We are human rights and it's very important that we remember that particular point. The key evidence, as I said with the refugee crisis and the conversation we are having human rights is the use of language. There are a few examples in that Conservative proposal for changing Britain's human rights laws which we have found here and a lot of it is really language that shouldn't be used. For example, twice the language is talking about Britain first. We must put Britain first. In the context of refugees, like we have just now a refugee crisis, or the context of human rights, that's the last thing we should do. We should put human first, everybody, wherever they come from, wherever they live. Margaret Mitchell talked about some of offenders and the relation to it. What she forgot to say, she didn't use the exact quote on the quote, he said they are foreign nationals and that idea to mix foreign national in a human rights debate with one of the most very crimes, most evil crimes that you will find in a debate on human rights is absolutely not the right thing to do. If the Conservatives haven't got a plan for change, that is not how we should debate it. Again, I will remind the chamber that we all have the responsibility to have when we view human rights on the language that we use. Thank you, Presiding Officer. It is fair to say that very few members' debates attract the level of interest that we have had this evening, but it is very rare that there is a question mark hanging over fundamental rights. Everybody who has attended deserves credit, starting with Christina McKelvie, who has brought the subject to the chamber. I also want to congratulate Amnesty International on the campaign that it has launched today. That campaign, let me be clear, has our support. Amnesty International is a very well-chosen name for an organisation. I want to draw attention to the international part of that, because the UK Government has promised to bring forward proposals for a British Bill of Rights. The desire to remove the word human is no accident and is much more than a cosmetic change because it signals a desire to move away from a universal standard, a separation from a human rights framework that is meant to connect and unite people around the world, regardless of their circumstances. Let us make no mistake, reducing the human rights safeguards that we currently have would threaten the fundamental freedoms of us all, but undoubtedly the most vulnerable members of society who are always hardest hit. To quote John Waddon, the former director of liberty, a simplistic version of democracy where Parliament rules and Parliament rules alone is not adequate to protect our democratic values. The Bill of Rights that we have is the human rights act and the Bill of Rights that we need is the human rights act. As a result of that desire to move away from the existing terms, it is no surprise that the eyes of the world are on us. There has been contribution focusing on the critical protections provided by ECHR and HRA, but let us not forget the wider framework, seven core UN human rights treaties and eight that we have signed up to under the Council of Europe treaty system. The UK was recently examined by the UN human rights committee in relation to its obligations under the international covenant on civil and political rights. A treaty which in itself echoes many of the key protections found in ECHR. Members will not be surprised at the committee's concluding observations expressed concern in the UN, as there is also in the Council of Europe at the prospect of the UK retreating from its commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms. That concern is widespread. Albie Sacks, a South African lawyer and judge, said, if you did a paternity test, you would find the UK's genes are there in the ECHR's conception. The threat to withdraw would be like daddy leaving home. The country that was amongst the founders of the European convention and the ECHR could become the dismantler of the entire enterprise. Ask ourselves what message does it send when we wish to provide international leadership on the importance of complying with human rights if we are withdrawing from what is seen as a more international standard. The Irish Government has highlighted the dimension that affects them, stating that protecting the human rights aspects of the Good Friday agreements are a shared responsibility between the two Governments. That is an unusual intervention, but it also reflects some of the constitutional issues that the proposals throw up within the United Kingdom. Under the Scotland act, the power to observe and implement international obligations, including obligations under the ECHR, falls firmly within the competence of this Parliament. Like the wider work of this Parliament, that power and those obligations are of immense importance. The sole convention exists to ensure that there is some constitutional underpinning of the rights of this Parliament, that the powers of this Parliament will not be changed without the permission of this Parliament, but that sole convention is bounded only by the UK Government's willingness to exercise restraint in using the sovereignty that the Scotland act 1998 reserves to them. Could there be a more apt illustration of where rights beyond the untrammeled will of Parliament are needed and necessary? There are some very real dangers here. Margaret Mitchell has highlighted the proposals, but I would say that if we are having a British Bill of Rights, if it is the same as the ECHR—why bother?—if it is different to the ECHR, it is safe to assume that this Government would not mean that the different means stronger, especially when there are the accusations of mission creep, and where there are the doubts, as Rod Campbell has highlighted, about commitments to social rights. We have heard repeatedly today about the desire to reduce the accessibility of recourse to those rights. Underlying the Conservative proposals is the complaint that sometimes courts in the UK or in Strasbourg deliver judgments that the Government of the day does not like. The rule of law means that Governments cannot simply pick and choose which court ruling should be allowed to stand. Courts making decisions with which we disagree is not an excuse to get rid of the court system. There are a lot of myths in the wider debate. Let me try and scotch a few of them. In 2014, the court dealt with 1,997 applications concerning the UK, and a violation of convention rights was found in only 0.7 per cent of cases. In fact, the UK had the highest number of judgments finding no violation. Malcolm Chisholm, Alison McInnes and others have highlighted some of the positive examples, the positive examples that we need to hear more about, the victims of rape that can expect now to see their complaints investigated, people serving in the army who can expect to receive equipment and training to an appropriate standard, children suffering mistreatment or neglect that can expect social services to respond to warning signs. Journalists who are not required to disclose their sources disabled people, including people with mental health problems and care or detention who can expect to receive treatment and conditions to meet their specific needs. Victims of LGBTI people who have used human rights to overcome discrimination and, indeed, that elderly couple who, after 65 years of marriage, were going to be forced to live apart due to their differing care needs and used the Human Rights Act in article 8, The Right to Family Life, to ensure that the council backed down. With every day that passes, I think that the UK Government is showing more and more that its all-consuming obsessions are shrinking the state and an instinctive aversion to almost anything with the word European in its title. Those are not my values, they are not this Government's values, they are not this Parliament's values. In fact, I do not think that they deserve the word values at all. Values are what are in the ECHR. Scotland will stand for those, Scotland will do the human right thing and I sincerely hope that the UK sees sense and follows suit. Thank you, Minister, for the members' business for this evening. I know who's this meeting.