The Liberal Democrats stayed silent for too long on Europe in the run-up to the Brexit referendum and cannot make the same mistake with the European Convention on Human Rights, the party’s annual conference has heard.
The Lib Dems are the third biggest party in the UK, with 71 MPs. On day two of their conference, in Brighton, the Law Society and Bar Council held a fringe event entitled ‘Defending the ECHR: Its importance to Britain and the case for reform’, chaired by shadow attorney general Ben Maguire MP.
Law Society deputy vice president Dana Denis-Smith said human rights and the law ‘provide the tools we need to ensure all of our rights are respected’. Chancery Lane ‘is strongly opposed to the country leaving the convention’. However, ‘the argument will not be won by us lawyers alone’.
Bar Council chair Kirsty Brimelow said the bar would stand against judges, courts and lawyers being used as ‘punchbags’.
Matthew Evans, director of the AIRE Centre, said supporters of the ECHR need to identify its ‘added value’ to rights and protections in domestic law. For instance, councils must now provide joint housing to couples living in care.
Will Forster MP, Lib Dem spokesperson for immigration and asylum, said the party needed to champion the ECHR amid a ‘right-wing consensus that says all the nation’s problems can be solved by leaving the ECHR’.
Forster said the party needed to ‘win the battle’ early over the convention, recalling that the Lib Dems ‘didn’t talk too much about Europe’ in the run-up to the Brexit referendum vote.
Concurring, Maguire said: 'We stayed far too quiet for far too long. It felt like the argument was lost before it even began... We did lose the argument on Brexit. We cannot afford to lose the argument on the convention.'
Maguire said the party had to think about the ‘doorstep test’ and make arguments in favour of staying in the convention ‘at a human level, not a legal or technical one’.
No comments yet