Government and Parliament: Relationship with Courts

Part of Justice – in the House of Commons at on 8 December 2020.

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Photo of Joanna Cherry Joanna Cherry Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Justice and Home Affairs), Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Justice), Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Home Affairs)

The terms of reference for the Government’s review of the Human Rights Act 1998, which were announced yesterday, include the relationship between domestic courts and the European convention on human rights. But of course human rights themselves, as opposed to the Act, are not a reserved matter, and Scotland’s courts play an important role in supervising human rights protections under the Scotland Act 1998. So can the Lord Chancellor give me a cast-iron guarantee that the British Government are not planning to interfere with the competence of the Scottish Parliament in respect of human rights and the jurisdiction of Scotland’s separate legal system in enforcing human rights protections?