Alton towers: a new chair for the Joint Committee on Human Rights

Parliament's Blair-era JCHR is now led by a quirky and independent-minded peer

Last week Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights met to elect a chair. Unlike most House of Commons select committees, the chair of the JCHR is not chosen by the House but from among the members (of both Houses) nominated to the committee, as was once standard practice for a select committee. Somewhat surprisingly, the committee chose crossbench peer Lord Alton of Liverpool as its chair.

David Alton is an unusual parliamentarian in many respects. He has vast experience of Parliament, first elected Liberal MP for Liverpool Edge Hill at a by-election in March 1979, when he became the “Baby of the House” at (just ) 28 years old. It was a gain from the Labour Party, although his deceased predecessor, Sir Arthur Irvine, had been a Liberal candidate at the 1935 general election and a 1939 by-election before joining Labour. Irvine had already been deselected by his Constituency Labour Party, accused of spending too much time in London attending to his practice at the Bar, but death intervened in December 1978 and made it a moot point.

The Liberals should not, by any rational calculation, have won the by-election. Polling took place the day after the Labour government, which the Liberal Party had intermittently supported, lost a vote of no confidence by one, forcing the Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan, to request a dissolution (which meant Alton, having been elected on 29 March, had to repeat the process on 3 May). Only a few months earlier, the former Leader of the Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe, had been committed to the Old Bailey for trial on the charges of conspiracy to murder and incitement to murder, the trial postponed until after the general election. It could hardly be worse publicity.

Liverpool Edge Hill had never been held by a Liberal. Not only that, Liverpool had not returned a Liberal MP anywhere since the general election of January 1910, when Max Muspratt, a councillor and company director, had been elected for Liverpool Exchange; he was defeated at that year’s second general election on December. That said, the Liberals had become the largest party on Liverpool City Council in 1974, though no-one had overall control, and it was led by a Liberal councillor from 1974 to 1976 and 1978 to 1983.

Labour’s candidate was 48-year-old Bob Wareing, a further education lecturer and local councillor. He had been born and educated in Liverpool, and spent most of his professional career in the city. (He would be MP for Liverpool West Derby 1983-2010, though would, ironically given his route to the candidacy for Edge Hill, be deselected by his local party.) Yet when the votes were counted, Alton trounced him by a margin of 8,133 on a swing of more than 30 per cent.

Alton served in the Commons until 1997, representing the successor seat of Liverpool Mossley Hill after 1983. From 1985 to 1987, he was the Liberal Party Chief Whip, but stood down to promote a Private Member’s Bill prohibiting late-term abortions, having long been opposed to abortion as a devout Roman Catholic. That stance on its own put him at odds with most of his colleagues. Although he joined his fellow Liberal MPs in forming the Liberal Democrats in 1988, he was ill at ease and feared the party would adopt a formal stance in favour of abortion. At only 46, he stepped down from the Commons at the 1997 general election, and was recommended for a life peerage in the Dissolution Honours by John Major rather than his own party. Since joining the House of Lords, he has sat as a crossbencher.

Alton is a deeply earnest campaigner. He co-founded the Jubilee Campaign in 1989 to promote the cause of children at risk around the world, opposed the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, has been a prominent supporter of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and persuaded the House of Lords to pass an amendment to the Trade Act 2021 which:

would require that the UK does not trade with genocidal regimes. Importantly, with the United Nations having shown itself incapable of making such decisions, the determination of whether genocide has taken place would be made by the High Court of England and Wales.

This was supported by, among others, Conservative grandees Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, Lord Blencathra, Lord Pickles and former Deputy President of the Supreme Court Lord Hope of Craighead.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights was established in 2000. As well as having technical scrutiny functions like considering remedial orders made under section 10 of and laid under Schedule 2 to the Human Rights Act 1998 and examining the compatibility of bills with the European Convention of Human Rights, it has a broader policy role to deal with human rights in general. Recent reports have included black people, racism and human rights, potential reform of the Human Rights Act, the historic adoption of the children of unmarried women and a proposed “Hillsborough law”.

(As I wrote earlier in the week, JCHR will examine the proposal for a draft remedial order Hilary Benn has presented to make changes to the widely unpopular Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, though he has been criticised for failing to repeal the statute in its entirety.)

The five chairs of the committee since its creation have always come from the House of Commons, though they need not have done so: Jean Corston (2001-05), Andrew Dismore (2005-10), the late Dr Hywel Francis (2010-15), Harriet Harman (2015-22, 2023-24) and Joanna Cherry (2022-23, 2024). Francis was the only chair until now not to have some legal qualification: Corston was a barrister, Dismore a solicitor, Harman a former law officer and Cherry an advocate and Queen’s/King’s Counsel.

That said, Francis was a quietly, unobtrusively effectual chair of what can be a difficult committee. Joint committees always a harbour a degree of tension because they bring together the two very different styles, working methods and cultures of the Commons and Lords, and even if some of the peers on the committee are former MPs (though currently only Alton falls into that category), those distinctions can cause friction. There is a particular potential source of conflict on JCHR between those who prize legal qualifications and eminence above all else and those who regard their and the committee’s role in a more political light.

Both are necessary elements of the committee’s work. It is not merely a technical advisory or regulatory body working to a legal schema, but its particular function means that it must have regard to matters of law more often than most select committees. But the occasional membership of very accomplished lawyers—Lord Lester of Herne Hill, Lord Woolf, Sir Edward Garnier—and experienced politicians—Harriet Harman, Lord Trimble, Shaun Woodward—can lead to competing priorities and emphases.

How will Alton fare? He is a crossbench peer, the first to chair the committee, and habituated to being ideologically isolated. Yet he was originally a teacher, worked in economically and socially deprived areas and with children with special educational needs, so he is hardly lacking in empathy or human connection. His tireless campaigning also demonstrates an ability to persuade and enthuse. There were occasional criticisms when he was still an MP that the apparently saintly Alton was not perhaps as pure as some thought. One anonymous Member said in 1994 during a campaign for more restrictive classification and availability of violent films of video:

He is generally seen as a one-man band. Many believe his primary motivation is vanity and seeing his name in headlines. He does takes credit —even in this latest campaign—for the work of many people. At root he is a political opportunist par excellence.

It may be that Alton has cultivated his other-worldly demeanour over time, but then, a politician who has never cultivated his or her image even slightly is a rare bird indeed. He can seem humourless, which is not fair, and hard work, which probably is. One lobby journalist labelled him “a bit of a creeping Jesus”.

The major challenge which has caused many to stumble in the past will be assuming the quasi-neutral role of chairing a select committee, a position which involves at least an element of being a referee rather than a player. Paddy Ashdown, Alton’s party leader for nearly 10 years, thought he was not a team player, which could be a handicap. The chair naturally has considerable influence over the work of the committee: he is responsible for its agenda and subjects of inquiry and will generally determine meeting times, witnesses and similar issues, although the broad consent of other members must be maintained rather than assumed. He will also work most closely with the staff of the committee, and initial drafts of reports are presented to members in the name of the chair.

But select committees are not dictatorships. There is an understanding that they should, and must, proceed by consent. Whether or not formal action is taken, a chair who loses the support of the rest of the committee will not remain in post long and the work of the committee is likely to grind to a halt. Unlike in a Commons select committee, the chair of JCHR has a deliberative vote rather than a casting one but it carries no special weight (thanks to former colleagues for reminding me of this aspect of procedure in joint committees). It also falls to the chair to create an atmosphere of non-partisan scrutiny: select committees are at their best when party labels are largely left at the door and members work as a collegiate and mutually supportive group (this is more frequent than many people might suppose).

Chairing a committee of Parliament, therefore, is a combination of roles: coordinator, umpire, cheerleader, peacemaker, exemplar and guide. That Alton is very obviously not a party hack of any description will help him as he can at least present a disinterested moral authority in partisan terms. Most colleagues regard him as honest and motivated by principle, and with 45 years’ experience in Parliament he should know by now how both Houses work and be able to gauge their mood.

The context of this parliament will be testing for JCHR. The Prime Minister is an experienced and eminent human rights lawyer, as is the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, who frequently acted as Sir Keir Starmer’s junior. The Shadow Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick, sought the Conservative Party leadership partly on a campaign of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, and although that is not the Opposition’s official policy, there is a consensus on the right that the ECHR must at least be re-examined. Human rights now represent an area of fierce and prominent public debate.

The membership of JCHR over which Alton will preside could take the committee in one of two directions, either sharp-edged, front-line debate, or the more technical and measured legal oversight of policy. A successful tenure as chair may require an element of both. In any event, a crossbench peer with a long and individualistic track record at the helm will provide fodder for commentators and close observers of Westminster. To live in interesting times…