Set Knightly
The UK federal government is preparing to re-work its human rights law to put an increased emphasis on “personal responsibility” and “duties to the larger society”, as well as preventing people “abusing” their rights.
Sounds quite terrible, doesn’t it? However let’s return to the beginning.
In December 2020 the UK federal government announced they would be checking out Human being Rights reform in the near future.
These announcements ended up being more concrete a year later on December 14th 2021, when the government started a “assessment” on restructuring the Human being Rights Act.
The strategy is to replace current rights legislation with a so-called “UK Expense of Rights”, a policy dating from the Cameron administration. The brand-new “bill of rights” would upgrade and replace the Human being Rights Act.
As a brief summary of UK human rights law:
Some rights are enshrined in typical law from the days of Magna Carta, but the vast majority of the time when we discuss “human rights” in the UK we’re describing the Human Rights Act 1998.
This act was composed into law as essentially a verbatim copy of the European Convention on Person Rights passed by the Council of Europe in the 1950s.
The function of writing the global treaty into domestic law was so British people might take human rights cases to domestic courts, rather of needing to go to the European Court of Person Rights in Strasbourg.
Similar to a lot of human rights laws, from the UN Declaration of Human Rights to the United States Constitution, a great deal of the time the Human being Rights Act is flat-out ignored, or at best worked around. However it does exist, and it does use some security of the individual from the power of the state.
Will that continue to be the case after these “reforms”?
The UK’s present “consultation” on Person Rights “reform” is set to end next month (March 2022), & whatever its last recommendations are will likely not be published for numerous months after that. However, while we can’t yet be certain precisely what they will say … we can get some rough ideas from what they have released up until now.
Dominic Raab, the Justice Secretary who commissioned the assessment, recently stated in an interview on LBC:
Our prepare for an Expense of Rights will reinforce normally British rights like flexibility of speech and trial by jury, while avoiding abuses of the system and adding a healthy dosage of good sense.”
If you’re anything like me, the expressions “abuses of the system” and “common sense” just made your inner cynic twitch, but there’s no real information there.
Maybe you’re believing, at this point, that if you check out the whole rundown document there will be nothing there to justify any fear.
… other than I have, and there is.
If you drill down through the filler, and can check out the bureaucratic language, there are some quite concerning warnings waving around, especially in their specified goals [emphasis added]:
Our reforms will be an examine the expansion and inflation of rights without democratic oversight and authorization, and will offer higher legal certainty.
[The Costs of Rights will] provide higher clearness regarding the interpretation of specific rights, such as the right to regard for personal and family life, by guiding the UK courts in interpreting the rights and balancing them with the interests of our society as a whole
[The Expense of Rights will] offer more certainty for public authorities to discharge the functions Parliament has actually given them, without the fear that this will expose them to pricey human rights litigation
The federal government is devoted to ensuring that the greatest social networks companies secure users from abuse and harm, and in doing so ensuring that everybody can enjoy their right to freedom of expression free from the worry of abuse.
Safeguarding authorities from legal consequences, stamping out “abuse” online, subordinating privacy to nationwide security … these are quite routine objectives of brand-new legislation nowadays. They are expected, nearly cliche.
The biggest and best warning sign is the large variety of points out of “task” or “duty” or “the wider society”.
For example, this sentence from the forward written by Raab himself:
our system needs to strike the proper balance of rights and obligations, specific liberty and the public interest,
And in point 6 of the Executive Summary …
The Costs of Rights will ensure an appropriate balance is struck in between individuals’ rights, personal obligation, and the wider public interest.
… and then point 9 too:
[The Bill of rights will] recognise that obligations exist together with rights, and that these need to be reflected in the method to balancing qualified rights and the solutions offered for human rights declares
The header at the top of Chapter 3, “The Case for Reforming UK Person Rights Law”, regrets:
the development of a ‘rights culture’ that has actually displaced due concentrate on individual responsibility and the public interest […] public security [is] endangered by the rapid expansion of rights
Entering into greater detail further down:
The international human rights framework identifies that not all rights are outright which a person’s rights may require to be well balanced, either against the rights of others or against the broader public interest. A lot of the rights in the Convention are ‘certified’, recognising clearly the requirement to appreciate the rights of others and the more comprehensive requirements of society […] The idea that rights come together with tasks and duties is steeped in the UK tradition of liberty
And then once again, in the first paragraph from area IV “Emphasising the role of responsibilities within the human rights structure” [emphasis included]:
All of us have duties in our society: to society (such as to follow the law and pay taxes), to our households, and to people around us. Everyone holds human rights whether they undertake their obligations, particularly the absolute rights in the Convention such as the restriction on abuse. Nevertheless, the government thinks that our brand-new human rights framework must show the value of duties.
It continues in similarly concerning fashion …
when a court is considering the proportionality of an interference with a person’s certified rights, it will consider the extent to which the individual has actually satisfied their own relevant responsibilities.
The general message is clear: Human rights can be tempered with “responsibilities” & anybody who does not satisfy their “responsibilities” is less deserving of the legal security of their rights.
This is neither new thinking nor brand-new language. Throughout “Covid times” we have actually seen talk of liberty parried with talk of duty, however it precedes Covid too.
For many years totally free speech has actually been tempered with talk of “being offensive” or “spreading false information”. The right to privacy has long been secondary to “national security” and “keeping individuals safe”.
Human Rights law is regularly defeated by The Patriot Act or Investigatory Powers Act or a lots similarly terrible pieces of legislation from both sides of the Atlantic.
And now, instead of bypassing human rights laws, this federal government is going to– to estimate Raab–“reconstruct them”. Indicating shred the existing ones and write all new ones. Ones that utilize “sound judgment” to ensure people are “accountable” and do not “abuse” their rights.
Within the scope of this so-called “reform” is the desire to include conditions to basic human liberties. Exchanging “self-evident” realities, “endowed upon guys at their creation”, for a quid-pro-quo contract with the state.
This is a seismic shift in the really definition of “rights”.
The entire point of human rights is that they are inherent and inalienable, they exist for everybody everywhere, and are not in the gift of any authority.
And now, rather, the UK federal government is arguing your rights are provided to you at their wish, which they come at the expense of expected responsibility.
And provided all the talk during the “pandemic” regarding “securing others” and being “accountable”— with masks, lockdowns and a lot of especially vaccines– it’s not difficult to see how these new “responsibilities” might be applied in the future.
There’s no direct talk of mandatory vaccination, yet, but if these new “human rights” laws are made a reality, the next pandemic might be much harder to browse.