The NLJ Column

David Cameron does soundbites: ministers do argument. That is clearly the intended subliminal message of recent lectures on big themes by Gordon Brown and Jack Straw. So the secretary of state for justice took himself to Cambridge to deliver the Mackenzie Stuart Lecture on Human Rights.

Straw’s speech was interesting chiefly for the way he sketched the battle lines between the government and the Tories in relation to a Bill of Rights. The core issue turns out, rather oddly, to be torture and the absoluteness of its prohibition in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Tories, said Straw, want a Bill of Rights which gives greater national sovereignty and allows us to deport suspected foreign terrorists to likely torture with greater ease. And this, indeed, does seem to be what Cameron has in mind. He has co-opted onto his commission studying the subject some of those who argue that a British Bill of Rights would be given such a fair wind by the European Court of Human Rights’ judges