Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution – in the Senedd at 3:17 pm on 12 January 2022.
Thank you for the supplementary. I mean, I can probably respond by perhaps quoting what the chief executive of Amnesty International said. This is a body that I think has support across political parties and incredible international status. Sacha Deshmukh, the chief executive, she said, 'Let's not pussyfoot around with this. It is not wrong to say that Government ministers risk aligning themselves with authoritarian regimes if their overhaul of the Human Rights Act is successful.'
When you take the review of human rights, what is also proposed in respect of judicial review, which is about limiting the ability of the courts to challenge the exercise of power—the unlawful exercise of power by Governments—when you look at the Nationalities and Borders Bill, which seeks to give arbitrary rights to take away citizenship from individuals, when you look at the police, crime and sentencing legislation, which seeks to provide substantial restrictions on the freedom to protest, what we have is a Government that is moving towards an increasingly authoritarian framework. So, this review is fundamentally important.
I can say, certainly, my view as Counsel General is that I do not want to see any diminution of human rights in terms of our compatibility with human rights legislation, and I think we'll make that clear and many other points clear in the representations that we actually make to the UK Government. You know, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. If ever there was a time to be eternally vigilant, now is it.