Is the Human Rights Act Safe?
It sure looks so. Clarke has never been supportive of repeal, and now the Tories have the Lib Dems as coalition partners it appears the new government is unlikely to make moves against the HRA any time soon:
The Tories had promised to replace the act, which many believe protects criminals more than innocent people, with a UK Bill of Rights.
But Mr Clarke, who was appointed to head the Ministry of Justice on Wednesday, suggested it was not high on the list of actions while the pledge was notable by its absence in the coalition agreement published this week.
In 2006, Mr Clarke attacked David Cameron over his “anti-foreigner” proposals to tear up the Human Rights Act, which was introduced by Labour, and said a Bill of Rights was “xenophobic and legal nonsense”.
And shortly after taking up his new Cabinet post, Mr Clarke said: “We are not committed to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, we have committed ourselves to a British Human Rights Act.
“We are still signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights.
“I have also got to see when the coalition agreement is completed how high a priority this is going to be given.”
It looks like a signal that the Tories’ intent to repeal the Act has been kicked into the long grass. If so it would represent an enormous success of the ConDemNation coalition. The main benefit of the Human Rights Act has been to make the European Convention on Human Rights more accessible to those who need it the most, and whilst I’ve always understood the Tories have never intended to leave the Convention, I believe the British Act to be indispensable. Explicitly proscribing the universality of human rights, not limiting them on nationalistic or any other grounds, and making access to the provisions of the Convention easier by incorporating them into British law was one of the greatest achievements of the New Labour government. If the Tories think they can’t get a repeal past the Liberal Democrats (or indeed the Justice Secretary), that’s something we should all be grateful for.
Human Rights Act Safe Under ConDemNation?
Ken Clarke is now the Justice Secretary, a role which had been expected to steer the repeal of the Human Rights Act if David Cameron became PM. But take a look at Clarke’s views on that idea, as recently as 2006:
Mr Clarke, a former home secretary and failed Tory leadership contender, has become the latest critic of the proposal.
He said he was not saying Mr Cameron hated foreigners.
Mr Clarke told BBC 2′s Daily Politics programme the European convention had itself been drawn up by a British lawyer.
The Tory leader is appointing a group of lawyers and experts to work out what should be in the new British Bill of Rights.
But Mr Clarke said: “He’s gone out there to try and find some lawyers who agree with him, which I think will be a struggle myself.”
The Human Rights Act has come under fire in some newspapers, who believe it has put the rights of criminals above those of victims of crime.
But Mr Clarke said: “In these home affairs things I think occasionally it’s the duty of politicians on both sides to turn round to the tabloids and right-wing newspapers and say ‘you have your facts wrong and you’re whipping up facts which are inaccurate’.”
Is Clarke going to completely undermine himself or does his appointment signal Cameron accepts he won’t be able to repeal the Human Rights Act with the Liberal Democrats as coalition partners?
Surveillance State Attacks Itself
In a superbly timed piece of New Year’s irony, Jack Straw has attacked the police:
“I’m afraid I’m rather sceptical about the excuse that a public service, in this case the police, is overworked and therefore can’t change.
“With a given level of resources, some police forces, or some parts of police forces do very much better than others.
“And it is the ones who are the less efficient and who have the wrong approach to the public who fall back on this ‘Oh, I’m overworked’ [argument].”
He said while some officers would claim it took four hours to fill in forms, “good police officers will take an hour to fill in the same forms because they want to get out and catch criminals”.
He added: “Some police officers, whatever they say, actually quite enjoy being in the police station in the warm. We are dealing with human beings, but we are also dealing with the kind of discipline and culture in the police service.”
And it’s ironic of course because the reason why police forces are so overworked is because of Straw and his minions – the architects of the surveillance society, who’ve passed numerous laws in the last 12 years to criminalise and stigmatise more of us than ever before. Yet of course Straw too is right, the agents of his database state are indeed hampered by poor leadership, organisation and organisational culture, but those aren’t problem which lead to police whingeing. Henry Porter ends the year saying:
But if I have one overriding concern in 2009 it is about the British police, which every day seem more like a force than a service, whether it is displaying violence at legitimate demonstrations, making secret databases of political and environmental activists, swooping with unnecessary might on innocent people such as the rock band the Thirst, making arrests to add to the DNA database, Tasering members of the public as punishment or treating football supporters with a shocking disregard for their rights. It has been a bad year for the police, and a worrying one for the general public who see an essential trust and respect being lost. The next government must find a way of bringing the police under control and making them realise that they are the servants, not the masters, of the public.
And he’s right. The problem is to do with police unaccountability, and a belief throughout their ranks that we are now subservient to them. Has their arrogant organisational culture been egged on by the Home Office (and now the Justice Department too), or has it happened because of their neglect? The answer is probably a bit of both, so Jack Straw is right in his prescription of what the problem is, but has deflected responsibility for its cause. It’s our responsibility to hold him, Alan Johnson and their successors accountable in 2010, because the mass media for the most part won’t, and only the smaller opposition parties are trying – and their voices are nowhere near loud enough. With the ISA this year we’ve gone well past the old refrain of ‘if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear’ – if we want the state to remain subservient to us we have to make it.
A Cynical Referendum by a Cynical Party
There will be a referendum after all, to replace Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, which allows a party to become the government, even though a majority of voters have voted for someone else:
Jack Straw, the justice secretary, will introduce the change in an amendment to the constitutional renewal bill. This will amount to paving legislation for a referendum on whether to introduce AV, to be held no later than October 2011.
Ministers, who agreed the move at a meeting of the cabinet’s democratic renewal committee (DRC) yesterday, believe that the prospect of a referendum will have three key benefits. It will:
• Allow Labour to depict itself at the general election as the party of reform in response to the parliamentary expenses scandal.
• Make David Cameron look like a defender of the status quo. The Tories, who are opposed to abolishing the first-past-the-post system, would have to introduce fresh legislation to block the referendum if they win the election.
• Increase the chances that the Liberal Democrats will support Labour – or at least not support the Tories – if no party wins an overall majority at the election, resulting in a hung parliament. The Lib Dems have traditionally regarded the introduction of PR as their key demand in any coalition negotiations. While AV does not technically count as PR, many Lib Dems regard AV as a step in the right direction.
I’m not happy with the idea of AV, when AV isn’t really any more proportional than first-past-the-post. And it does look like a sickeningly cynical manoever, although if they manage to keep the referendum in place if/when they lose the election, it will indeed be quite an impressive achievement. Someone at least has understood that they have to present themselves as a party prepared to embrace change, but if this is as far as they’re prepared to go down that road then even then it doesn’t even count as a half measure. Britain’s surveillance culture is now completely out of control – we’re well down the road of everyone having to be checked so that they’re not a paedophile, merely in order to get a job. We’re in a time when photographers snapping a sunset are being stopped by police for fear of being terrorists, and when a government with a track record of screwing up databases reserves the right to hold on to your DNA, even if you are innocent of a crime. If they’re unprepared to think about tackling these terrible civil liberties and human rights abuses and are using a referendum promise to distract our attention, and to outflank the Tories for future electoral gain, then they really aren’t interested in change at all. I agree with Stephen Tall, who says:
Labour has had 12 years in which to renew the democratic fabric of this country. They failed to do anything about it because, quite simply, they didn’t care enough about it. If they care now, it is only because it’s expedient to; and expediency is the worst possible motive for reform.
Prison Service Violates Transsexual’s Human Rights
Deputy Judge David Elvin QC has quashed Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s ruling that pre-op male-to-female transsexual prisoner ‘A’ should be kept in a male prison. Straw’s ruling had come despite ‘A”s having been recognised as a woman ‘for all purposes’ three years ago under the Gender Recognition Act 2004. In disagreeing with Straw, the judge said:
“It follows that, so long as the claimant remains within the male prison estate, she is unable to progress towards the surgery which is her objective.”
This “interferes with her personal autonomy in a manner which goes beyond that which imprisonment is intended to do”, he said.
“I declare her continued detention in a male prison is in breach of her rights under Article 8 (right to private and family life) under the European Convention on Human Rights.”
Disgracefully the Prison Service said it was ‘disappointed’ at the ruling. Clearly a disregard for human rights has now crept from the Home Office and its agencies to the Ministry of Justice. But it’s an impressive demonstration that human rights must apply to (and be accessible by) all.
(via Equality and Human Rights Commission)
Reforming the Lords – Just not Right Now
Reform of Britain’s upper house might have been a priority for New Labour in 1997, but as with many other important issues, they’re only just getting around to it. Justice Secretary Jack Straw now appears to acknowledge it’s time to elect our senators-in-all-but-name, but wants it to take a generation to happen:
Straw said: “All the parties are agreed that moving to an 80% or 100% elected house will take three parliaments. By definition you need not do 100% before arriving at an 80% threshold. Therefore it follows that reformers do not need to tie themselves in knots about whether the final destination is 80% or 100%. If we get to 80% that would be a major achievement.”
Reformers, who will have a chance to question Straw at the seminar, may express disappointment that the government is not endorsing a wholly elected chamber from the outset. The government has faced criticism for the slow pace of reform after the expulsion of all but 92 hereditary peers in 1999.
The justice secretary will defend his decision to move at a measured pace for three reasons: it is right to try to build a consensus; his proposal keeps alive the prospect of a wholly elected upper house; and it will take time to introduce a complex electoral system.
Let me make this clear – I don’t believe 80% would be acceptable, and taking 15 years to do so would be beyond a joke. It sends out the message that the New Labour bigwigs who are about to lose their jobs want to feather their nests, and discredits the whole point of reform – democratising the political process. I believe the scrutinising chamber should be wholly elected by single transferable vote, but this brings up the other question – if it’s so important to reform the upper house of parliament, why is it then apparently unimportant once again to reform the House of Commons? The power of whips over the composition of select committees is still total, the executive is still using statutory instruments to get legislation passed over the heads of the legislature; there is next to no meaningful oversight over laws passed in our name. Oh and of course there’s the thorny issue of the voting system, which remains not at all representative, and forces confrontational politics to fight over a small pool of swing voters rather than actually offering the change the country needs.
Lords reform is important but nowhere near as important as reforming the voting system. Sign Vote for a Change’s referendum here if you want the chance to have your vote actually mean something.
