Curtains for human rights ?

The Commission on a Bill of Rights published what it calls a discussion paper, 'Do we need a Bill of Rights?',  in August.  My initial encounter with it was disappointing.  I had expected it could sit down with me over a coffee and discuss the merits of David Cameron's take on human rights and maybe laugh gently at the thoughts of Nick Clegg on the same subject.  No.  It just sat there in my desk, not saying a word.

The paper has all the hallmarks of an issue which government cannot simply ignore but prefers it does not occupy centre stage while it wrestles with more pressing affairs of state such as waging war in Libya and Afghanistan [but not Bahrain] and sandbagging the doors [back and front] of 10 Downing Street to prevent the backed up sewage overflow from News Corp phone hacking ruining the carpets.  It has to be seen to be doing something.

Hence the creation of a Commission, stuffed with establishment luminaries steeped in the grand old traditions of UK law.  So too are the terms of reference couched in a language style which has been matured for centuries in the dusty folds of the heavy velvet curtains which have shaded the desks of mandarins in Whitehall since William Pitt the Younger ordered “Roll up that map: it will not be wanted these ten years.”.  The British have rarely embraced Europe with anything other than a curled lip of disdain and distaste.

"Roll up that map: it will not
be wanted these ten years."

 “To investigate the creation of a UK Bill of Rights that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in UK law, and protects and extends our liberties.  

“To examine the operation and implementation of these obligations, and consider ways to promote a better understanding of the true scope of these obligations and liberties.”

 Before addressing the questions posed in the discussion paper, I suggested to the Commission some wider issues need to be recognised and accepted in their work.

Their paper is in many ways and for many people, thoroughly inaccessible.  The language used and limited context offered suggests an author more at home with constructing exam papers for second year law students, than engaging citizens in transparent and meaningful debates.

There is a similar lack of person-centredness to the paper, with no sense that human rights could or should be central to the daily lives of all citizens or that they could or should be routinely claimed by all citizens without recourse to courts and lawyers.

It would have greatly assisted the quality of debate had the Commission offered some person-centred illustrations of how the current framework of human rights law, practice and culture has been used and abused, as well as offering person-centred illustrations of alternative options or, indeed, what might flow from the adoption of a Bill of Rights.

In many senses, the questions set by the Commission reflect the weaknesses of the present legal frameworks within which the flame that is human rights flickers feebly in the stiff breezes of prejudice, bigotry, political mendacity and duplicity, and swathes of real ignorance across the population.  An entirely different and much more useful debate would have been had if all had been encouraged to take views on whether a Bill of Rights could act as a positive force in rebalancing the relationship between state and citizen and so restoring true accountability, transparency and responsibility between government and citizens.

As written, the paper encourages an almost exclusively theoretical, intellectual and arid  debate around the value of a Bill of Rights.  This represents a lost opportunity.  A significant flaw in the law, practice and culture of human rights in the UK has been that they have become separated from the very people they were supposed to benefit, each and every citizen, and instead have become the plaything of lawyers, courts and politicians.  Unless the Commission aims to return ownership of human rights to each and every citizen, the report produced in 2012 will surely join the legions of other such reports which are hidden within and ultimately turn to layers of dust in the folds of heavy velvet curtains which will still be shading the desks of Whitehall mandarins a century hence.

 Within that context, my answers to the Commission's questions were as follows.

1.    do you think we need a UK Bill of Rights? – yes.  For two simple reasons.  The present system and its constituent elements, including the Human Rights Act 1998, is failing and is in significant disrepute.  It is likely the effort required to reverse this and achieve a goal where human rights are understood, claimed, and respected by all citizens as part of daily living, is thoroughly disproportionate and would it would take several generations to pass in the interim.

Secondly, the unwritten nature of the constitutional relationship between government, state and citizens offers no discernible advantages to citizens and has been a major factor in human rights becoming the plaything of lawyers and others over the course of the latter half of the twentieth century.  The power relationship between state, government and citizens needs to be rebalanced and redressed and a Bill of Rights is more than likely to offer a strong bulwark against government and the state accruing yet more power – usually in the name of security - at the expense of citizens.

2.    what do you think a UK Bill of Rights should contain? – from what I have read, the model on offer in the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission ‘Advice on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland’ provides an excellent core around which to properly debate and introduce a Bill of Rights which meets the needs people and communities in all the different parts of the UK. 

3.    how do you think it should apply to the UK as a whole, including its four component countries of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales? – if human rights are to be a passport to a place where the relationship between citizen, state and government is one of mutual interdependence, respect, and responsibility, then as long as the UK comprises the four countries in various models of devolved administration, each and every citizen of the UK needs to find the framework of human rights is constant and equal across the UK.  To adopt varying or differing degrees of a human rights framework is I believe a fundamental contradiction of what the the concept at the heart of a universal declaration on human rights.

  

4.    having regard to our terms of reference, are there any other views which you would like to put forward at this stage? – in some senses there is a case to be made that the law itself is not the issue.  What one can learn from the Human Rights Act over the last 11 years is that it has not become an everyday commodity used by UK citizens, that respecting human rights has been played out in courts and not in our streets and workplaces.  If the Commission is to produce a report which sat-navs the way for a person-centred human rights based approach being embedded in the lives of all UK citizens, then that report has to require government and the state accepts the need for a power shift from it to citizens.  Education, knowledge transfer, training, and capacity building has to be put in place alongside any new legal frameworks on human rights to that the claiming of human rights by UK citizens in each and every part of their daily living becomes commonplace.