LONDON: The budget-cutting austerity program of Britain’s new coalition government has been claiming all the headlines, but David Cameron’s cabinet is breaking with its Labour predecessor in another key area as well: human rights. Indeed, the human-rights experiment that Tony Blair’s Labour government brought to Britain has failed.
Faulted by some for its inability to prevent “illiberal” anti-terrorism measures, the Human Rights Act is criticized by just as many others for hampering counter-terrorism policy. Indeed, many people mock the very notion of human rights, which is seen as leading to “loony” concessions that favor criminals and terrorists. Overall, the reaction of both press and public is one of disillusion and/or cynicism.
Britain famously has no written constitution, or, until recently, anything resembling a modern Bill of Rights. Instead, we have Magna Carta and cricket. The concept of universal human rights is literally foreign — enshrined in the broad-brush principles of the European Convention on Human Rights, whose court sits in Strasbourg. Until recently, anyone who wished to bring a human-rights case against the British government had to go to France.
Times changed when Tony Blair came to power in 1997. With fanfare and idealism — reflected in the slogan “Rights Brought Home” — the Human Rights Act came into effect in 2000. But the high-minded liberalism of the then-elite had a practical point as well: should the government have any soiled linen, it should be laundered in British courts rather than be aired before a panel of international judges.
Yet the Act is unloved by the British public, which never engaged with the process. As Tony Blair’s wife, Cherie Booth, herself a human rights lawyer, lamented, “the majority of people feel that human rights are not relevant to their lives.”
There is a lesson here: if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Put another way, actions speak louder than words.
When compared with human-rights abuses that truly affect humanity, the complaints dealt with by the British courts are small beer. Which child goes to what school or what public housing is offered to which asylum seeker will be of concern to many people (and views will differ). But using the broad brush of “human rights” to resolve such issues trivializes the concept. It also inhibits proper debate. After all, what responsible public body wants to be accused of violating human rights?
Indeed, the threat of human-rights litigation has made providers of public services overly cautious and defensive. This has led the popular press to howl that we now live in a costly, bureaucratic, and inefficient “human rights culture” — a charge with profound political resonance. Before he became Prime Minister, Cameron called for the Human Rights Act to be replaced with something more “British.”
Paradoxically, some deem human rights to be wholly inefficacious where their recognition is most required. Many MPs who backed the incorporation of the European human-rights convention into British law came to view formal recognition of human rights as a grave inconvenience when faced with Al Qaeda-inspired terrorism. In short, having brought rights home, the Blair government ended up trying to hide them under the sofa.
This conundrum is symbolized by the debate over detaining terrorism suspects without charge or trial. Initially, Blair attempted to force through detention without charge for up to 90 days. Parliament settled on 28 days — still the longest such period in the Western world.
So much, then, for Article 6 of the European Convention, which provides that everyone charged with a criminal offense has the right “to be informed promptly” of the nature of the accusation against him. So much, also, for Magna Carta, which provides that “No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned…but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.”
Blair’s behavior is not unique. The fact is that any piece of legislation purporting to embody human rights is entirely vulnerable to a political system in which parliament is supreme. The Human Rights Act must inevitably yield to subsequent legislation. All legislation is passed by a simple majority. And judges cannot strike down legislation. The result? Rights brought home one day; detention for a month without charge the next.
Indeed, even when the cause of human rights is being advanced, the Human Rights Act is now overlooked. In May, in his first major policy speech, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced the sweeping away of the “Big Brother” state that Blair had constructed: no more ID cards or national identity register, new restrictions on the storage of DNA, tighter regulation of the closed-circuit television surveillance that had made the British the most monitored people on earth, and so on. All this and not one mention of “human rights” — an absence that reflects the political sensitivity of human rights in Britain today, and that tacitly acknowledges that when the stakes are high, the Human Rights Act cannot be relied upon.
Where, then, does that leave the Cameron government’s supposed extirpation of Big Brother? One way forward would be to go further than Blair by ring-fencing certain principles and creating some form of constitutional court to defend them. But the cost of such rigid rules may be high, and their effectiveness, as witnessed by the vagaries of the United States’ record on human rights, is less fool-proof than is sometimes imagined.
So, perhaps in a mature democracy, human rights should be dignified by actions rather than words. Instead of introducing more legislation that is tainted both in the popular imagination and in its utility, Britain could, after all, trust its constitution to act as and when required to safeguard liberty and fair play. For good or ill, democratic sentiment will win out, and Britain’s human-rights record, while imperfect, remains strong.
Jonathan Small is a Queen’s Counsel in London. This commentary is published by Daily News Egypt in collaboration with Project Syndicate, www.project-syndicate.org.
