As the Conservative Party attempts to reinvent itself, it should cease its Euro-sceptic opposition to the European Convention on Human Rights, accepting that the convention is in fact just, effective and democratic, writes Roger Smith

The Conservative party has been strong in defence of civil liberties but has jibbed at supporting the Human Rights Act. As old shibboleths are dumped in the cause of electoral plausibility, the accession of David Cameron provides an opportunity to reconsider.


Conservatives should be, after all, natural supporters of ‘power to the people’ (a phrase used by Margaret Thatcher until purloined by a battery manufacturer). Sir Keith Joseph and Lord Hailsham supported a Bill of Rights in the mid-1970s. The Conservative party is reviewing the Human Rights Act. No harm in that. But the result should be support.


Tories tend not to like the ‘European’ nature of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). They should be reassured. It was drafted by British lawyers and based on UK law.


There were few other appropriate templates for successful liberal democracy immediately after the Second World War. National sovereignty was recognised by developing the doctrine of ‘margin of appreciation’, which gives signatory countries considerable discretion in how they interpret the ECHR’s principles. Thus, the crucial political debates – for example, abortion or euthanasia – still take place in Parliament and not the courts. Diane Pretty’s court challenge for support of assisted suicide failed.


The convention is entirely compatible with the form of British democracy. It does not entail a US-style surrender of social policy to the judges. If it helps to avoid the ‘E’ word, the convention could be incorporated as the core of a new British Bill of Rights – though the drafting of this is likely to be a nightmare. Better to stay with what we already have.


Last December, Maya Evans was convicted of the offence of demonstrating without authorisation in a designated area. She read a list of names at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. The Crown Prosecution Service is considering charging Milan Rai with organising her unlawful demonstration. Both fell foul the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.


Members of Parliament fought this legislation in the House of Commons but lost to the government whip. The Human Rights Act provides the only way in which such egregious legislation might be returned for parliamentary reconsideration. It gives power to individuals so that they can assert their rights and, if successful in establishing that legislation is incompatible with the ECHR, reinforces parliamentary accountability. This must be a good thing. Previously, there would have been no possible redress for such an authoritarian and disproportionate measure.


The Human Rights Act has the potential to improve public services by requiring consideration of the individual rights of those receiving them. This is very much in line with cross-party policy.


One of the leading human rights cases was brought by a group of people living in a large home to stop its closure and the break-up of their community. They lost on a technicality, but anything that allows their argument to be heard is surely to be supported. Similarly, Barbara Clark used the Act to get Herceptin to treat her cancer. She would not have got it otherwise.


Many of those who oppose human rights fear undue surrender of power to the judiciary. But take the most potent contemporary example of Algeria. The government wants to send a bunch of undesirable Algerians back home, relying on assertions from their government that they will not be tortured when they get there. It is argued such a policy, if opposed by the judges, puts them in opposition to the democratic will.


We should remember that the Foreign Office publicly deprecates the endemic use of torture and assassination in Algeria. The ECHR contains a clear ban on torture or ill-treatment that extends to collaboration with other states. A court should not be ordered to believe whatever an Algerian government says – it is essential that it look at what is actually likely to happen. That is surely a good basic principle.


The government of a state such as Algeria is a menace not only to Algerians but everyone else. A state’s use of torture tends to export its dissenters around the world as they, reasonably enough, run away. Dissident Algerians lead a hardcore of militants spreading terror through the countries of their exile.


Human rights are not only about the assertion of moral values. In a world of easy global transport, breach of human rights by one country brings danger to every other.


We are either in the Council of Europe and supporters of its convention or not. It would surely be somewhat unsavoury, and hardly helpful to British interests, to join the pariah state of Belarus as the only European countries between the cities of Lisbon on the Atlantic and Vladivostok on the Pacific that will not sign the convention. There is no realistic half-way house.


The Tory party should throw off its doubts and actively announce its support for human rights. The time is right. The arguments are right. Pragmatism combines with principle.


Roger Smith is director of the human rights campaigning group Justice