Joint Committee on Human Rights
The Joint Committee on Human Rights is a select committee of both the House of Commons and House of Lords in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The remit of the committee is to consider human rights issues in the United Kingdom.
Purpose
The Committee undertakes thematic inquiries on human rights issues and reports its findings and recommendations to the House[s of Commons and Lords]. It scrutinises all Government Bills and picks out those with significant human rights implications for further examination.The Committee also looks at Government action to deal with judgments of the UK courts and the European Court of Human Rights where breaches of human rights have been found. As part of this work, the Committee looks at Remedial Orders, the legislative mechanism that allows legislation to be amended in response to these judgments.
— Source: Committee website [1]
Membership
As of 25 May 2016, the current members of the committee are as follows:
Member | Party | Constituency | |
---|---|---|---|
Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP (Chair) | Labour | Camberwell and Peckham | |
Fiona Bruce MP | Conservative | Congleton | |
Karen Buck MP | Labour | Westminster North | |
Baroness Hamwee | Liberal Democrats | — | |
Lord Henley | Conservative | — | |
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon | Labour | — | |
Jeremy Lefroy MP | Conservative | Stafford | |
Mark Pritchard | Conservative | The Wrekin | |
Baroness Prosser | Labour | — | |
Amanda Solloway | Conservative | Derby North | |
Lord Trimble | Conservative | — | |
Lord Woolf | Crossbench | — |
Changes
Unlike the Commons, the Lords elects its members of the committee at the beginning of each session. Occasionally, the Lords, during a session, or the Commons, during a Parliament, may make changes to its membership on the committee. Such changes are shown below.
Date | Outgoing Member & Party |
Constituency | → | New Member & Party |
Constituency | Source | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2 November 2010 | Andy Slaughter MP (Labour) | Hammersmith | → | Virendra Sharma MP (Labour) | Ealing Southall | Hansard | ||
28 March 2011 | Eleanor Laing MP (Conservative) | Epping Forest | → | Rehman Chishti MP (Conservative) | Gillingham and Rainham | Hansard | ||
23 May 2011 | Julian Huppert MP (Liberal Democrats) | Cambridge | → | Michael Crockart MP (Liberal Democrats) | Edinburgh West | Hansard | ||
14 June 2012 | Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (Crossbench) | — | → | Baroness O'Loan (Crossbench) | — | Hansard | ||
5 November 2012 | Michael Crockart MP (Liberal Democrats) | Edinburgh West | → | Simon Hughes MP (Liberal Democrats) | Bermondsey and Old Southwark | Hansard | ||
11 February 2013 | Dominic Raab MP (Conservative) | Esher and Walton | → | Robert Buckland MP (Conservative) | South Swindon | Hansard |