The Human Rights Act
I had the unusual opportunity today of attending a brief talk by Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty fame. Her subject was human rights in the U.K., and the threat which they are currently under.
Shami Chakrabarti's main thrust was that the Human Rights Act (the "HRA") was a fragile and vulnerable piece of legislation, which was becoming more and more endangered by an increasingly authoritarian government and complacent electorate. She described the HRA as the only bulwark standing between the rights of the citizen and the powers of the executive and urged us to engage upon a wide civil society campaign to raise awareness among the general public of the importance of the HRA in protecting individual human rights.
Shami also touched on several other points: for example, that the war on terror has had the effect of turning murderers into soldiers (reference the video of London suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan), and that the government's ID card scheme is dangerous as it has no defined purpose (and as such is therefore likely to grow and grow) and also because it proposes to store information unverifiable by the individual.
These wider issues are also interesting, however, it is Shami's impassioned plea to protect the HRA which interests me most. What she singularly failed to address was the the question of enforceability. It is all very well to claim that the HRA enshrines fundamental rights owed to all citizens and that in some circumstances, such as the Belmarsh prisoners, it is the only constitutional bar between prisoners' basic rights and a knee-jerking, opressive state. What puzzled me, however, was her complete failure to explain how, once a court has ruled an action or piece of legislation to be incompatible with an individual's human rights, we propose to enforce this. So far as I can see, the HRA is simply a fanciful wishlist of values we would like our judiciary, legislature and executive to enforce. However, I cannot see its teeth. Without teeth, it strikes me that the HRA is in fact, quite pointless, as it cannot bind anyone, whether an individual or an emanation of the state.
I know the Reptile has a fair amount to add regarding the consequences of giving the HRA teeth, so I will not open that debate here.
I merely wish to ask the question: if the HRA has neither bark nor bite, what is its purpose?
Shami Chakrabarti's main thrust was that the Human Rights Act (the "HRA") was a fragile and vulnerable piece of legislation, which was becoming more and more endangered by an increasingly authoritarian government and complacent electorate. She described the HRA as the only bulwark standing between the rights of the citizen and the powers of the executive and urged us to engage upon a wide civil society campaign to raise awareness among the general public of the importance of the HRA in protecting individual human rights.
Shami also touched on several other points: for example, that the war on terror has had the effect of turning murderers into soldiers (reference the video of London suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan), and that the government's ID card scheme is dangerous as it has no defined purpose (and as such is therefore likely to grow and grow) and also because it proposes to store information unverifiable by the individual.
These wider issues are also interesting, however, it is Shami's impassioned plea to protect the HRA which interests me most. What she singularly failed to address was the the question of enforceability. It is all very well to claim that the HRA enshrines fundamental rights owed to all citizens and that in some circumstances, such as the Belmarsh prisoners, it is the only constitutional bar between prisoners' basic rights and a knee-jerking, opressive state. What puzzled me, however, was her complete failure to explain how, once a court has ruled an action or piece of legislation to be incompatible with an individual's human rights, we propose to enforce this. So far as I can see, the HRA is simply a fanciful wishlist of values we would like our judiciary, legislature and executive to enforce. However, I cannot see its teeth. Without teeth, it strikes me that the HRA is in fact, quite pointless, as it cannot bind anyone, whether an individual or an emanation of the state.
I know the Reptile has a fair amount to add regarding the consequences of giving the HRA teeth, so I will not open that debate here.
I merely wish to ask the question: if the HRA has neither bark nor bite, what is its purpose?
posted by Token Bird at 1:21 PM
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