---

Human Rights

If we were to try to produce a piece of legislation to deal with each and every one of those cases, we would never be able to plug all the gaps—which is what the Human Rights Act does, in bringing the European convention home to the United Kingdom. As things stand, however, the protections of the Human Rights Act in such cases are being whittled away because of the courts’ interpretation of what is a public authority. Privatisation and contracting out are undermining the safety net provided by the Act for the most vulnerable people, such as the elderly and the disabled. When I put that to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at the Liaison Committee, he said:"““I think that anyone who is providing a public service is clearly subject to the same rules...The way to deal with it is to make sure that public and private sector bodies are treated the same when they are providing a public service””." I agree. That is a key issue for the future of the Human Rights Act—an issue on which the Joint Committee on Human Rights will report in the future, and on which I introduced a ten-minute Bill—the Human Rights Act 1998 (Meaning of Public Authority) Bill. The Government’s commitment to the rights and values protected by the Human Rights Act has increasingly been challenged by high-profile, but usually ill-informed, press reporting of maladministration, wrongly attributed to the Human Rights Act, by statements from senior Ministers and, as we have heard tonight, by statements from Opposition Front Benchers. In May 2006, the Prime Minister asked the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Home Office to conduct reviews of the impact of the HRA. The Joint Committee on Human Rights broadly welcomed the conclusion of those reviews. We reiterated our concern that one of the greatest challenges to human rights in the UK was the need to engage the public imagination and embed a human rights culture among ordinary people, not simply within public authorities, the House or lawyers’ chambers—not that that has yet been achieved in any event. By a culture of human rights, we mean not the neglect of duties and responsibilities, but a climate in which respect for those rights becomes an integral part of our way of life, a reference point for our dealings with public authorities and one another. Such a culture cannot be achieved through litigation alone. It demands that decision makers understand human rights law correctly, and integrate into their policy and decision-making processes those real expectations—not the myths and not the excuses of politically correct jobsworths, who use bizarre misinterpretations as lame and bogus explanations—to ensure that the traditional British sense of decency and fair play, enshrined in the Act, is reflected in the way they work. A good example of that is the Kentucky Fried Chicken case, about which we have heard, and in which what was probably an unpopular and difficult decision to feed someone on a roof during a siege was somehow justified using the Human Rights Act, when the decision probably made common sense in the negotiations to get the man down safely. It had absolutely nothing to do with the Human Rights Act at all. However, damaging myths about human rights have taken root in the popular imagination. The JCHR examined in close detail three cases that led to calls for the amendment or repeal of the Human Rights Act. The first case was that of the Afghani hijackers, who were never convicted of an offence in the UK; their conviction was overturned on appeal. The second case was the deportation of foreign prisoners. That issue arises out of the European Court of Human Rights, as has correctly been said, and I suspect that we would come to the same conclusion, in relation to individual cases, across the House. The third case involved the management of Anthony Rice by the probation service. In respect of each of those cases, assertions were made by senior Ministers that the Human Rights Act, or the judges or officials interpreting it, were responsible for the unpopular events that took place. In each case, those assertions attributing the outcome to the Human Rights Act were unfounded, and in the report the Committee gives a full analysis of why that is the case. We welcome the Government’s new commitment to human rights myth busting and raising public confidence in the Human Rights Act, but public misunderstandings are likely to continue so long as very senior Ministers fail to retract inaccurate comments already made or make further unfounded assertions about the Act, or it is used as a scapegoat for administrative failings. We have already heard about the high-profile case in which a police authority refused to publish photographs of convicted prisoners on the run, as it wrongly considered that publication would breach the escaped convicts’ right to privacy. The Association of Chief Police Officers has confirmed to me that nothing in the Human Rights Act would prevent such publication in the interests of public safety. There may occasionally be operational reasons why photographs should not be published—for example, if they are out of date—or there may be other reasons, to do with a surveillance operation, but nothing in the Human Rights Act leads to that conclusion. It issues guidance only in respect of people who have not been convicted of any offence who may be suspects. The Lord Chancellor’s speech on 9 February made him the chief myth buster, dispelling what he called the ““clouds of nonsense””. He was entirely correct to entitle his speech ““Human rights and common sense””. Ministries must be encouraged to take prompt action to prevent the development of Human Rights Act-based myths or scapegoating within their own areas of responsibility, which has happened. The recent Department for Constitutional Affairs review ruled out withdrawing from the European convention on human rights or repealing the Human Rights Act. It did not, however, rule out the possibility of amending the Human Rights Act in future. The Lord Chancellor told us that the value of an amendment would be to send a ““message”” to officials or public authorities, rather than to change the meaning or effect of the convention. In the JCHR’s view, it is wrong to use legislation, and parliamentary time, to send messages about the law. That can be done through guidance and instructions to Departments. Amending the Act to enshrine a duty to protect would not add anything to the existing obligation to protect the right to life. Indeed, our summer report on counter-terrorism re-emphasised the duty of the state to protect its citizens from terrorism. We proposed a series of Human Rights Act-compliant reforms to the criminal justice system to that effect—for example, in relation to the use of intercept evidence in court, a matter that I understand is under detailed consideration and on which I hope that we will have a sensible answer. I am also referring to the need to allow the police to interview post-charge terrorist suspects and to allow adverse inferences to be drawn from a failure to co-operate, and to more judicial control over the detention processes. We came to the conclusion that it was not necessary to extend the pre-trial detention period—a view that I think is shared by the Opposition and which is supported, contrary to what we heard earlier, by requirements under the Human Rights Act. This also applies to concerns about the operation of control orders. Again, I understand that the control orders regime was opposed by the official Opposition in terms of the Human Rights Act. In contrast with the Department for Constitutional Affairs review, which provided a lengthy analysis to support its conclusions, the Home Office review has never been published. That review suggested that there was a ““culture of risk aversion””. The Government said that they were addressing that, but failed to provide any evidence of a culture of risk aversion having resulted from the Human Rights Act in the first place. Without proper open scrutiny of the Home Office review, there is a real risk that the implications of that so-called culture may be overblown or misreported, as we have heard from the Opposition tonight. I suggest that in her closing remarks my hon. and learned Friend the Minister might like to give us the reasons why the Government will not publish the review. That said, we welcome the fact that the Government did not assert that there was an imbalance in the criminal justice system that prioritised the rights of offenders over victims. The establishment of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights this year will give rise to a new impetus for the development of a positive culture of human rights in the UK. However, there is clearly much work to be done in the meantime. The commission will need time to find its feet. In the meantime, the Government must ensure that Ministers and public authorities do not cut across the benefits of the Act or undermine them by making ill-informed statements, which should be withdrawn when it is pointed out that they are plain wrong. Myths must still be busted, and it may be Ministers, not just the Lord Chancellor, who are in the best position to do that effectively. I am pleased that we have started to witness more of that activity recently. For example, on the lunchtime news, the Lord Chancellor quickly came to the case involving the Derbyshire police, saying that there was no reason under the Human Rights Act why those photographs should not be published. The Human Rights Committee will continue to work with the Commission for Equality and Human Rights to monitor and research the extent to which the Act has an impact on policy making and on the lives of ordinary people, not just by scrutinising Bills for their Human Rights Act compliance, but in a more positive way: by looking at Government policy statements to see whether they are genuinely Human Rights Act compliant, and by pointing out failures not just in legislation but in delivery of services. That is where the real battle should be fought—not over black letter law, but over ensuring that human rights are mainstreamed throughout our public services and, where services are not delivered, appropriately pointing that out.