Are human rights safe under the coalition?

By Darren Jones

In his first major speech as Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg spoke of repealing excessive laws whilst advocating a string of parliamentary reforms which have been advocated for hundreds of years. But one area of vital importance was left relatively unmentioned – especially interesting as it’s an area of clear disagreement between the newly wedded Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg – and that is the Human Rights Act.

For some time now, the Conservative Party has openly wanted to repeal the Human Rights Act – one of the greatest achievements of the New Labour Government – and replace it with a Bill of Rights. Indeed, David Cameron has referred to the culture developed by the Act as ‘infecting’ society – how such a negative interpretation of the protection of fundamental Human Rights is justified I don’t know!

On a softer note, Cameron has argued that the ‘culture’ of Human Rights has developed a nation of rights and not responsibilities (which has supposedly led to the ‘Broken Britain’ that he so much referred to during the election campaign). This message was further developed in the Conservative Manifesto, but that document provided no detail as to how, in reality, they expect to link greater social responsibility with the replacement of the HRA to ‘protect our freedoms from state encroachment’.

We in Britain have a proud history in promoting human rights at home and around the world, we have a proud history as a welcoming nation and a proud history as a nation that many in the world look to for inspiration for what is moral, what is just and what is fair in our modern globalised world today. This proud history translates into the wide popularity of our protection of human rights today by a majority of the British people.

It seems that the Liberal Democrats agree with this sentiment, with manifesto commitments to extend and protect the rights of people under the HRA. Indeed, in his ‘big reform’ speech Clegg proclaimed that “any government would tamper with it at its peril”! But the day before Clegg’s speech, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, supported the continued used of control orders which – quite frankly – is dodgy human rights ground.

When it comes to any protection of human rights through the law one must remember that it is the outcome of the agreement that is important, and it is the protection of the vulnerable from the potential abusive power of the state and the protection from negligence of those with a duty to protect that is important. It is not the name or packaging of the agreement that is important.

Many prominent members of the new government, however, have challenged the Conservative policy, including Ken Clarke and Chris Huhne. At a time when the Government is shouting about its “new politics’ – and filling the House of Lords with unelected party political rent-a-crowds, centralising power from the back benches to the executive, trying to prevent a fundamental constitutional right to force a dissolution of Parliament and slowing down reform of the voting system – one has to wonder how ‘new’, indeed how ‘liberal’ the coalition really is, and what this means for the protection of human rights in our country.