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Human Rights

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Lester, for this important debate. Like many noble Lords, I believe that the Human Rights Act is and remains the right vehicle for acting for the rights of British citizens. Before I came to this debate I spoke to a number of people, many from black and ethnic-minority communities, who increasingly felt that their liberties were being curtailed and that they were isolated and watched. We are the most watched population in Europe; the Government have found many ways of gathering more and more information on us. Many of us have little idea what other bodies have access to that information and how it is secured. The Government have not inspired confidence in the British public with their IT projects, and their insistence on pushing for ID cards seems to many a very dangerous course, especially given the shambles that has followed the projects so far. To date, we have not received satisfactory answers on the holding of DNA or fingerprint details whether or not a person has committed a crime and kept just on the basisof arrest. The Minister needs to allay the fears of the public, particularly groups who already felt that they were targets for having their liberty removed on the basis of intelligence that cannot be readily challenged. Organisations such as Liberty have warned the Government of the negative impacts ID cards will have, in particular on race relations in this country, especially among ethnic-minority communities. Can the Minister provide evidence from other countries where ID cards are in use? Do citizens in those countries feel safer, and have ID cards lessened the threats felt among people? Youth in some communities feel that they are already looked at with greater suspicion by the police and other government organisations and that they are made scapegoats when intelligence turns out to be misguided. What were the outcomes of the many meetings held around the country by Ministers to talk to communities, particularly the Muslim community, and to address alienation and ways to re-engage Muslim youth? Another area that concerns me greatly is the human rights of children and young people. Sadly the headlines only highlight the small minority who cause distress and mayhem to our neighbourhoods. However, many more suffer silently each day, until they are badly injured or, in some cases, killed. I was taken aback a few days ago when a news item showed that some people felt that the NSPCC’s television campaigns, encouraging people to offer financial support, were too graphic and too extreme. If those adverts distress us, can you imagine the pain and misery of children who have to endure that environment day in, day out? How do we keep failing these children when so much information is already held on us? Why is it that the police and other agencies cannot stop such atrocities, such as the example I will now give your Lordships? It was reported in the Observer on Sunday 4 February that: "““Britain's child protection services will face severe criticism … when a couple are sentenced for torturing their four-year-old daughter in a case that has alarming echoes of that of Victoria Climbie””." The couple had, "““poured boiling liquid over the child’s hands, ripped out her hair, kicked her repeatedly … locked her in the toilet over seven terrifying weeks””" fed her her own faeces and given her cold baths. The parents had previously had the child taken away because there was already domestic violence between the spouses. I have in the past supported women who have suffered terrible physical and mental abuse at the hands of their husbands and partners to get their lives back together, to help them find support and sometimes to support them in court. Where are the rights of those women and their children protected? The Government’s mission has been to ensure that, increasingly, people can access our personal details, give greater rights for people to enter our homes on behalf of the Government and confine us to control orders without producing any evidence or giving us a right to appeal, yet when it comes to protecting rights it seems that the powers that be and the systems let down often the most vulnerable people. Can the Minister assure the House that there will be no plans to introduce ID cards and instead that the Government will fully support greater policing and better community cohesion? Can she also assure us that much better ways of handling information can be developed so that those who are most vulnerable from bullying in schools and abuse in the home can be dealt with much earlier in the process rather than being badly damaged before intervention takes place? I come back to beginning. The Government cannot say that they are the guardian of the human rights of the people in the UK when they are so determined to ignore those rights when it suits them. They cannot expect to move the goalposts when they so choose. It is the inconsistencies of their interpretation of the Human Rights Act that need to be sorted out so that people can have confidence in what the Government are doing.