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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. An intervention should be brief. The right hon. Gentleman's second point should be dealt with in the winding-up speech.
Mr. Maclennan: I am grateful to the Home Secretary for his intervention. He has gone some way to removing my concern, which flowed from clause 28 of the Scotland Bill. That provides that the Scottish Parliament should have legislative competence only in respect of matters for which there is no incompatibility with convention rights. I am greatly relieved if the declaration of a Minister is sufficient to remove that condition, and if that will be triggered by the earlier implementation of clause 19.
I do not want to conclude my contribution to the debate on a minor, perhaps querulous, note. The issues that are covered by the Bill are of historic importance. Although the Minister has said that the Government do not intend to take a step towards establishing a written constitution, I do not doubt that that is, in fact, what is happening.
In drafting the Bill, the Government have been extremely careful to avoid the possibility of judges striking down the legislation of Parliament, on the ground that it would fall foul of fundamental law. That is understandable in the light of the current attitude of judges, who would not altogether welcome such a power. There can be no doubt, however, that judges have changed their minds to the extent that they broadly support this measure. I anticipate that, as they have inspired confidence that they would use the power judiciously, they will feel less reluctant to take the greater responsibility of deciding that Parliament has gone beyond the accepted view of people, as expressed in a written constitution. I do not consider that an embarrassing prospect; indeed, I think that many would regard it as highly desirable.
I also think that--as the Minister emphasised--the Government have sought to secure what they describe as the sovereignty of Parliament. Earlier, I expressed doubt about whether that was necessary or even desirable: I felt that the people were sovereign, and that their views could be expressed outside the House.
Mr. Straw:
That is a Scottish point.
Mr. Maclennan:
Indeed. It has always been understood by the Scottish courts that that is the position. However, such a philosophical argument, or
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough):
The right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) referred to what is in the Bill. It may seem odd, on Third Reading, to deal with what is not in a Bill, especially given that, during today's debate--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Lady should not talk about what is not in the Bill, because the purpose of Third Reading is to talk about what is in the Bill.
Fiona Mactaggart:
Indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The Home Secretary has shown a willingness to take on the issues that have been raised, and to amend the Bill. It has therefore become more comprehensive, and deals more effectively with Labour's manifesto promise to bring rights home. It may not be able to fulfil that promise completely, owing to what the Home Secretary, on Second Reading, described as a fine balance. It has not incorporated article 13 of the convention.
It is said that the existence of the Bill creates an article 13 right. Interestingly, subsequent case law may suggest that article 13 constitutes a separate right, which can be considered separately. Someone whose human rights are not delivered by the institutions of government may have the right to have that properly investigated. In the Aydin case, the inability of the Turkish authorities effectively to use their power to visit the scene of the incident--this was following a rape--to summon witnesses and to call forensic evidence was queried. For example, no officers had been questioned in the critical initial stages of the investigation. I expect that that criticism of the lack of a domestic remedy might sound familiar to the parents of Stephen Lawrence.
I believe that we can deliver a domestic remedy within the framework of the Bill as it is. I hope that the Home Secretary, in his usual approach of finding solutions--the task force that he has incorporated to work with him on this will do that effectively--will ensure that, in practice, that domestic remedy is delivered.
We have done some radical things during this Bill. To the Government's surprise, we have incorporated protocol 6. That was an important step. In the White Paper that preceded the Bill, the Government announced their intention to introduce legislation that would mean that our laws were compatible with protocol 7, so that we could incorporate it. I urge a similar approach to be taken on the fourth protocol.
We have already made announcements--there was a series of announcements during the summer--about the rights of British dependent territory citizens. If we extended their right to reside in the UK, some of the difficulties in ratifying the fourth protocol would be avoided, but what we have done in the Bill so far has consequences.
Mr. Straw:
With the leave of the House, I shall respond briefly to the points that have been made in the debate.
First, I thank the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell) for the trust of his remarks. I had hoped that, during the passage of the Bill, it might be possible to deal with matters in a way that did ensure that there was some consensus behind it. I am pleased that it looks as though that may be the case.
Of course I understand that the official Opposition--it is not their right, but their duty, to express different views--have reservations about aspects of the Bill. Its implementation needs to be not only prepared carefully, but monitored with great care.
Earlier in the debates, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary referred to our intention, which we had flagged up in the White Paper, to establish, or to propose the establishment of, a parliamentary Committee on human rights--it is a matter for Parliament, not for us, to determine--to monitor progress in implementing the Act and the way in which it develops and, where appropriate, to make recommendations to Parliament for changes that may be needed.
I should like also to thank the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) for his particularly generous remarks about me. I am grateful to him for those. As I said before, I am grateful not only for the co-operation but for the inspiration that he and his colleagues have provided. He was right to say that some of us have been later converts to the cause than he was. I should have taken more notice of the views of my former head of chambers, Sir Edward Gardner, when he was promoting his Human Rights Bill in 1987. He was a distinguished man, and I should have listened to him. Nevertheless, we have got there in the end.
Those of us who know Lord Lester know him to be indefatigable in pursuit of incorporation of the European convention on human rights. Although he is sometimes indefatigable to the point of exhausting his friends and colleagues, that only adds to our admiration of him. He has worked extremely hard on the issue and the Bill's passage, and he deserves our collective thanks.
I should deal with the points made on Scottish and Welsh incorporation of the convention. The Government's intention is that implementation will occur on the same date for all constituent parts of the United Kingdom. On the obligation of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly to ensure either that their legislation is compatible with the convention or that, if it is not, they state that it is not, as I said earlier--in an over-long intervention--the
Government's intention is that the obligation will not apply to those institutions before it applies to the House and to the other place. I should add that, in practice, both this Government and the previous Government have observed an obligation to attempt to ensure that Government legislation is compatible with the convention, albeit currently such compatibility can be tested only at Strasbourg and not in United Kingdom courts.
My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) asked a question about article 13. Article 13 states:
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"Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in this Convention are violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity."
Although article 13 mentions a national authority, the truth is that it is there to provide a remedy for the international Court at Strasbourg. For that reason, the Government thought that it would be inappropriate to include article 13 in the Bill to incorporate the principal operational parts of the convention that provide substantive rights.
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