If I told you one Cabinet member had put forward a Bill that’s incompatible with the Human Rights Act, who would you guess I was talking about? Surely not Nick Clegg, the man who has repeatedly defended that Act against calls for it to be scrapped? And yet — as Adam Wagner has just pointed out on the UK Human Rights Blog — there it is, on the front page of the House of Lords Reform Bill:
‘The Deputy Prime Minister has made the following statement under section 19(1)(b) of the Human Rights Act 1998:
I am unable to make a statement of compatibility under section 19(1)(a) of the Human Rights Act 1998 in respect of the House of Lords Reform Bill.’
Section 19 requires the minister in charge of any Bill to state that it is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights or say — as Clegg does here — that he can’t make such a statement but that ‘The Government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the Bill.’
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