Human Rights Convention impact "profound and beneficial", Grieve states
The European Convention on Human Rights is “arguably the single most important legal and political instrument for promoting human rights on our planet”, the former Attorney General, Dominic Grieve QC, MP said last night.
Mr Grieve was delivering the Rule of Law Lecture, a joint event between the Faculty of Advocates and the Bar Council of England & Wales, in the Faculty’s Laigh Hall, on the title “Is the European Convention on Human Rights Working?”
He argued that an examination of the work of the European Court of Human Rights since 1960 showed that its impact had been "profound and beneficial", citing cases such as the ending of state discrimination against children on the grounds of illegitimacy and of judicially-sanctioned corporal punishment.
“What is striking about these decisions is how well they have stood the test of time… although they were controversial at the time, some of them extremely so, the human rights norms which they express are now ones we largely take for granted”, he observed.
With the increase in recent times in the number of member states of the Council of Europe, Mr Grieve said the Strasbourg court was now a court of final resort for some 800m people, many living in states where “the principles underpinning the rule of law are often misunderstood, misapplied or ignored”. The Convention had been "of the greatest importance in helping promote the rule of law in environments where it has never previously existed”.
He commented that the proposals announced by the Westminster Government displayed "considerable ambivalence” to the value of the Convention.
“The Government has stated that it will publish a detailed consultation paper on its ideas for a Bill of Rights and our future relations with the Convention this autumn. I very much welcome this,” he said.
“…I rather suspect that in doing so, it will have to accept the overwhelming evidence that the Convention, when viewed in its totality, has been and remains today a success, arguably the single most important legal and political instrument for promoting human rights on our planet… I am convinced that if this matter is debated with determination and good humour, we will get the right answer at the end of the day.”