70 Tory MPs vote to repeal the Human Rights Act

Yesterday in Parliament, Richard Bacon, a Conservative backbencher, tried to introduce a Bill which would repeal the Human Rights Act 1998. One of Mr Bacon's lines of argument was that the legal requirement for Ministers to amend legislation - without a vote in Parliament - in order to comply with European human rights legislation - is "fundamentally undemocratic":

"Under section 10, a Minister of the Crown may make such amendments to primary legislation as are considered necessary to enable the incompatibility to be removed by the simple expedient of making an order. In effect, because the accepted practice is that the United Kingdom observes its international obligations, a supranational court can impose its will against ours. In my view this is fundamentally undemocratic."

Mr Bacon also compellingly argued that the controversial social issues that judges often like to get involved in should be decided by "elected representatives and not by unelected judges":

"[T]here is no point in belonging to a club if one is not prepared to obey its rules. The solution is therefore not to defy judgments of the Court, but rather to remove the power of the Court over us. ... Judges do not have access to a tablet of stone not available to the rest of us which enables them to discern what our people need better than we can possibly do as their elected, fallible, corrigible representatives. There is no set of values that are so universally agreed that we can appeal to them as a useful final arbiter. In the end they will always be shown up as either uselessly vague or controversially specific. Questions of major social policy, whether on abortion, capital punishment, the right to bear firearms or workers rights, should ultimately be decided by elected representatives and not by unelected judges."

When the motion was put to the House, it was rejected by 195 votes to 72. Those Conservatives who voted not to reject the motion, and support the repeal of the Human Rights Act, are listed below and they included south east MP's Nick Herbert (Arundel & South Downs), Mike Weatherley (Hove), Henry Smith (Crawley) and Charlie Elphicke (Dover).

1. Peter Aldous
2. David Amess
3. Richard Bacon
4. Stephen Barclay
5. John Baron
6. Andrew Bingham
7. Brian Binley
8. Bob Blackman
9. Crispin Blunt
10. Peter Bone
11. Angie Bray
12. Andrew Bridgen
13. Dan Byles
14. Alun Cairns
15. William Cash
16. James Clappison
17. David Davies
18. Philip Davies
19. Jackie Doyle-Price
20. James Duddridge
21. Charlie Elphicke
22. Graham Evans
23. Mark Field
24. Andrew Griffiths
25. Robert Halfon
26. Gordon Henderson
27. Nick Herbert
28. Philip Hollobone
29. Adam Holloway
30. Sir Gerald Howarth
31. Stewart Jackson
32. Bernard Jenkin
33. Gareth Johnson
34. Marcus Jones
35. Andrea Leadsom
36. Peter Lilley
37. Karen Lumley
38. Anne Main
39. Jason McCartney
40. Stephen McPartland
41. Stephen Metcalfe
42. Nigel Mills
43. Andrew Mitchell
44. Anne Marie Morris
45. David Morris
46. Stephen Mosley
47. Sheryll Murray
48. David Nuttall
49. Matthew Offord
50. Neil Parish
51. Stephen Phillips
52. Christopher Pincher
53. Mark Reckless
54. Jacob Rees-Mogg
55. Laurence Robertson
56. Andrew Rosindell
57. Henry Smith
58. Mark Spencer
59. Iain Stewart
60. Graham Stuart
61. Justin Tomlinson
62. Andrew Turner
63. Martin Vickers
64. Charles Walker
65. Robin Walker
66. Mike Weatherley
67. Heather Wheeler
68. Craig Whittaker
69. John Whittingdale
70. Bill Wiggin
71. Sarah Wollaston

The full arguments can be read on Hansard.