William Cash (Stone, Conservative)

I come to the debate on a slightly historical note. All the talk about Magna Carta in speeches made by Lord Falconer and so on completely misses the point of what we are considering this evening. When I was shadow Attorney-General I made clear from the Front Bench my opposition to the Human Rights Act. At the time, that caused a little controversy but as things have turned out, the Opposition are formally committed to repealing the Act. I was very pleased to hear what my hon. Friend Mr. Bellingham said from the Front Bench earlier. There are profoundly good reasons for that commitment, to some of which I have alluded in interventions, in particular the fact that none of the rights and responsibilities that are certainly important to people cannot properly and adequately be dealt with by our own legislation in the House.

For those who wish to refer back to Magna Carta, important and symbolic as it was, I draw their attention to the fact that the barons themselves were as shady a bunch of people as one could possibly come across. Furthermore, when it was signed in 1215 or 1216, Magna Carta was regarded as a virtually useless document and it simply was not implemented. It was only later that people considered the intrinsic questions that lay at the heart of the document and those questions are important irrespective of whether Magna Carta was signed by King John. There is some doubt that it was.

Magna Carta was about containing the power of the Crown and it subjected the Crown to the rule of law. It was also about ensuring that there was habeas corpus and a right to a fair trial. There was no reference to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience or freedom of choice, and despite what I heard Lord Bragg say the other day in a programme about Magna Carta, nor was there any reference to democracy or democratic elections. The fact is that the intrinsic importance of the development of our democratic system is at the heart of what we should be debating today and it does not derive from Magna Carta. In fact, the right of democratic decision making in the House is alien to the concept of our adopting a universal declaration and enforcing it in our courts by the judiciary. I refer to the judicial activism of the courts at the expense of the decision making by this House on laws properly passed by those elected in general elections as representatives of the people.

I have developed over a number of years much the same argument about legislative supremacy in relation to the European Union. I am glad to say that my party endorsed that argument when it agreed to my amendment on the legislative supremacy of the House in relation to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. We whipped my proposal for legislative supremacy both in this House and subsequently in the House of Lords, and I stand by that principle. My greatest aversion to the Human Rights Act and to the European convention on human rights results from the fact that they take away by implication—although we can override them if we so wish—the intrinsic right and intrinsic ingredients of our decision making in this House.

I am not arguing that we should abolish human rights. That would be absurd; it would be obscene. That is not the point I am making. What I am saying concerns trying to achieve a proper balance between the individual and the state, and that is why I, my hon. Friend Mr. Shepherd and a few others at the beginning so objected to the idea of identity cards. In the debate, I held up to the Home Secretary George Orwell's book "1984" and said, "This is the kind of world that you will introduce to this country." From that moment on, we began to make a significant change in our policy and now, I am glad to say, my party is opposed to ID cards for the reason that I have given.

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