It’s a month since the government published its green paper on rights and responsibilities, and I’ve written nothing about it yet; I’ve been trying to gather the strength. I also managed to miss the justice minister responsible, Michael Wills, gaving a lecture about it last week to the British institute of Human Rights. Reading the lecture, it’s clear he feels on the defensive: and he’s right to. I’ve long thought the entire policy was misconceived, and the while the green paper is a brilliant exercise in covering this up with words – the civil service can perform magnificently when called upon – it takes us not much further.
Well, all right: it takes us a little further. We know now that the government is against diluting the Human Rights Act by making the rights in its in any way conditional on fulfilment of responsibilities (see para. 2.22 of the green paper). We also know now that the government is against any new bill having full legal force (see para. 4.25). Finally, we know now that the government isn’t intending to do anything about this till after next year’s election (para. 5.3). That, though, is enough new knowledge to conclude that the entire exercise is a waste of time.
The origins of this green paper go back to the government’s 2006 review of the implementation of the Human Rights Act, which concluded that in some ways, public bodies had applied the Act in an unbalanced way, giving too much importance to the rights of individuals and insufficient weight to public safety. Aware of criticism of the Act in newspapers and of the Conservative pledge to repeal the Human Rights Act, ministers have felt the need to show they “get” the problem, and to be seen to be doing something to rebalance things. The problem is, being seen to be doing something is the important thing here; actually doing something comes lower down the agenda. Which explains the content of the green paper.
There’s a lot of guff about Rousseau, Bentham and all those characters, and a suggestion we might have a non-justiciable statement of responsibilities such as the responsibility to treat NHS staff with respect, living within environmental limits, voting (although there’s no suggestion this will be made compulsory) and doing jury service. Any such statement would waste Parliament’s time to no good purpose. To compare such a prosaic list to the Gettysburg address, as Michael Wills did in his lecture, is risible. The only other real options put forward in the green paper are a set of principles that would inform judges’ decisions and/or legislation while not being strictly enforceable – a recipe for legal uncertainty, on the one hand, and for a box-ticking approach to legislation on the other; and for new duties to be placed on public authorities, which would if you think about it run in the precisely opposite direction to the original motivation of the bill.
I think this is a phoney exercise. Michael Wills is right in his lecture to attack the Conservatives for having no coherent policy on human rights – he attacks everyone in that lecture, in fact, from the Guardian to Shami Chakrabarti – but the truth is, he has no coheretn policy either. The government is merely floating ideas that would have little effect if acted upon and which it will not act upon any time soon; and it is doing this merely in reaction to the Conservatives.
Because what this green paper does do is give the government some sort of “line” to take in an election campaign. If the Tories say something must be done about the Human Rights Act, Labour ministers can now at least reply: Look – we’re already doing something! It doesn’t really matter what that “something” might be, as long as the line can be spun.
I’m afraid I have to conclude that that, and that alone, is and has always been the point of this charade.
The United Kingdom took the trouble to op out of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights – together with the fairly fundamentalist government of Poland at the time.
A master stroke to position the UK outside even the slipstream of the European Union.
And the UK Government continues the discussion about a Bill of Rigths as if the European Union was an alien entit from another planet.
A rational attitude would have led to a discussion about the pros and cons of the EU Charter, given the possible particular circumstances in Great Britian.
Since when have the rights within the European Convention been conditional on people exercising “responsibility” or “responsibilities”? A lot of the folk appearing before the local magistrates are thoroughly irresponsible people but they still have basic rights such as the right to a fair trial etc. Government is NOT entitled to make the rights conditional but the fact that they have considered reveals their mindset.
There is much about modern British politicians which makes one distrust them. Some idea of principles to “inform” judges could be a dangerous step. Such Ministerial edicts can have a habit of filtering into many areas such as sentencing guidelines issued to magistrates etc.