ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now it was one of the Conservative manifesto promises, scrapping the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a British Bill of Rights.  Well now David Cameron has made it a key part of his plans for his first 100 days back in power but there is already talk of a rebellion from some of the party’s backbench MPs and with a majority of just 12 seats that could spell trouble of course for the government.  Well the Conservative MP and former Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, is here with me now, a very good morning to you Mr Grieve.  Did you listen with a sense almost of disbelieve when we’ve heard over the past week of people within the Conservative party talking about a quick fix for something as complex as this?  Do you think it was just the euphoria of winning the election?  

DOMINIC GRIEVE: It may have been the euphoria, it clearly is no quick fix. The Human Rights Act, of which there are critics, is currently well embedded in our constitutional settlement, for example it underpins devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and in the case of Northern Ireland it is part of an international treaty with the Irish Republic so any change, it’s difficult to see how any change to replace it with a Bill of Rights could be done against the wishes of any of those parties.  So there’s the first hurdle that you’ve got to get over.

DM: And not unsubstantial.  

DOMINIC GRIEVE: Then there are quite a few others including what it is you want to achieve at the end.  Is this merely a cosmetic change or is this a desire to do something which is going to be radically different from the Convention of Rights which protects us at the moment.  If it is going to be radically different and it is going to leave us in a position where in fact we are not compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, that that raises really some quite profound issues, firstly about our relationship with the Council of Europe, 47 member states and an important international organisation in which the UK has played a leading role over many years and secondly with the EU because the EU requires its member states to be adherent to the Convention. So all this is mighty complicated.  

DM: So again on the quick fix line, what we hear he wants to be achieved is that ultimately you end up with a British Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court in this country being the end arbiter about these issues.  So not 100 days, are we talking thousands of days?

DOMINIC GRIEVE: I should say first of all the Supreme Court is already supreme.  The question as to whether we observe a decision of the European Court of Human Rights is an international legal obligation, they don’t override our own Supreme Court so that in itself shows I think a little bit of strange woolly thinking because it’s promising something which in fact already exists and this is why I have to say I find the manifesto commitment, whilst I fully understand there’s a desire to review the position, is not at all clear as to what we are actually trying to achieve.  

DM: Well some of the ambitions go beyond that from none other than the Home Secretary, complete withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights.  

DOMINIC GRIEVE: You could withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, you’d have to give six months’ notice but the consequences reputationally for the United Kingdom on the world stage and for our EU membership at a time when we are building up to a referendum on Europe would be very considerable so my view is that the sensible course of action is for the government to go away and carry out a proper consultation.  We’ve never been able to do this, the last government – the coalition government – set up a commission to review the Human Rights Act and whether we should have a Bill of Rights, it produced a very learned document but frankly it didn’t come up with any conclusions.  The Conservative party has done some work but the work which a party can do is not the same as work that can be done in government, the expertise is there in government but you need to make use of it so my strong belief would be is that the sensible course of action is to pause on this.  There are after all five years of this government, carry out the review before going ahead with any changes.  

DM: But you know it’s tied up with the issue of an EU referendum, that this in many people’s eyes – many members of the general public – this is part of what’s wrong with the EU so to speak so a quick fix may be required.

DOMINIC GRIEVE: But the ultimate irony is that it has got nothing directly to do with the EU whatsoever.  It is not an EU document, it is not EU imposed – although as I made the point, if we were to abandon it, it might have consequences for our EU membership.  It is totally unconnected to the referendum.  I am greatly in favour of a referendum, I should make quite clear, I think it’s one of the best things that the Prime Minister has offered the British people and it is very important that we should get on with the renegotiation and hold that referendum but this I have to say is in some ways a bit of a distraction but it’s a distraction that I think could turn out to be extraordinarily complex, time consuming and I always come back in my mind to this, at the end of the day what are the benefits going to be compared to the costs of change?  The benefits I know that some people hope are that somehow if we have a Bill of Rights, magically the United Kingdom will no longer be constrained in some of the things that people would like government to do.  

DM: But some of the specifics that appear in the newspapers, for instance being able to extradite or return to the country of origin foreign criminals who have served their time in the UK who get to stay here for a variety of reasons.

DOMINIC GRIEVE: Well that’s nonsense.  Even if we were to change and pull out from the European Convention of Human Rights and have a Bill of Rights it is not going to make our life any easier for two reasons.  Most of the people we can’t send back to their country of origin is be the country of origin won’t take them or denies that the person concerned is their citizen, it has nothing to do with human rights at all.  In the one or two cases where there really is a problem because the person is in danger of being tortured or killed on their return, well actually it’s the International Convention for the Prohibition of Torture which ultimately the reason why we can’t send them back.  The United States has got about 50 people in Guantanamo Bay who it can’t get rid of for that very reason, they don’t have a Human Rights Act.  So I think we need to be realistic about what it is we are trying to achieve because otherwise we are just going to be distracted into a rather sterile series of debates on something which in fact never produces the result that I can well understand some members of the public may want.

DM: And can I just finally get your view then on that EU referendum, if as you would like that this issue which seems to have slightly overlapped gets decoupled from that larger debate about membership of European Union, do you think there is trouble ahead with the Conservatives?  A wafer thin majority, will that embolden those who think we should leave the European Union come what may?

DOMINIC GRIEVE: My view from what I’ve picked up is that the Conservative party is completely united behind having a referendum.  Obviously when the referendum comes it may well be that people are going to argue on different sides, that’s something which I think has been quite clear for a long time, this is a matter on which reasonable people may disagree but the unity over giving the Prime Minister the opportunity to renegotiate and then above all giving the British people the opportunity for the first time in many years to express their view about EU membership, on that I don't think there is any disunity at all.

DM: Dominic Grieve, thank you very much indeed for your time, the former Attorney General there.