NEW MP Keir Starmer has used his maiden speech in the House of Commons to demand that the Human Rights Act is saved from the axe.

He rose to his feet in the chamber on Friday for the first time since winning the Holborn and St Pancras parliamentary seat at last month’s general election, warning that the Conservative government would be making a mistake to repeal the Act.

He said: “Since it is customary to root a maiden speech in one’s constituency, I have decided to start in the British Library, which lies in the heart of my constituency of Holborn and St Pancras. As the Camden New Journal reported early in February this year, four surviving Magna Carta manuscripts arrived at the British Library just in time for the 800th anniversary in June of the historic settlement in 1215. 

“Great claims are made of Magna Carta. They in­clude that Magna Carta was the foundation of the notion of equality before the law and individual freedom; that it enshrined due process, habeas corpus and access to justice; and that it was the origin of ­trial by jury. 

“If all those claims were actually true, no doubt the remaining provisions of Magna Carta would be earmarked, alongside the Human Rights Act, for repeal, not celebration.”

Mr Starmer, the first new MP for the constituency since 1979, told MPs: “It is thus ironic that in the year when we celebrate Magna Carta, proposals were announced in the Queen’s Speech to ‘bring forward proposals for a British Bill of Rights’. That is code, of course, for repealing the Human Rights Act, which, like Magna Carta, is a human rights instrument setting out fundamental values and rights. 

“It too has its origins in a historic settlement between the individual and the state. In the aftermath of the Second World War, nations came together to say, Never again.’”

He warned that discussion about overbearing European power on the UK was unfounded: “Nothing in the Human Rights Act makes the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights binding in our courts. 

“The obligation on the UK as a whole to abide by the decisions of the European Court is found in the European convention, signed nearly 60 years ago. Repealing the Human Rights Act will make no difference unless the UK also withdraws from the convention itself.”

The former director of public prosecutions was a landslide choice among local members to follow in retiring Frank Dobson’s footsteps in the constituency. He paid tribute to his predecessor but said he was unlikely to match Mr Dobson for humour or facial hair. 

“I doubt I’ll clock up 36 years,” he said.

Mr Starmer added: “The Human Rights Act has heralded a new approach to the protection of the most vulnerable in our society, including those in care homes, child victims of abuse and of trafficking, women subjected to domestic and sexual violence, those with disabilities, and victims of crime. 

“That is important in my constituency of Holborn and St Pancras. There we celebrate great vibrancy and diversity, but you do not have to go very far to find great inequality, whether measured in wealth, health, housing or child poverty. 

“It is those on low pay, those in poor housing, those with physical and mental health needs, the vulnerable, the put-upon and the bullied in St Pancras and Somers Town, in Regent’s Park, in Gospel Oak, in Haverstock and across my constituency who will be the losers if we abandon the guarantee of equal rights for all.”