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Human Rights

I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lester, on securing the debate and thank him for the opportunity to take part. He described the human rights legislation as having a magnetic force over the whole of the legal system, and I am sure that he more than anyone else understands the impact of that. But I am challenged by the push indicated in his own speech and that of the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, for a UK Bill of Rights. I want to reflect on that a little and question whether we need yet further legislation. The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, has rightly pointed us to the excess of law we have been engulfed in. We must ask whether we need more legislation or whether we need a different approach of mind. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said that without a Bill of Rights we would become a brutal and vindictive society. He may well be right. However, I wonder whether with a Bill of Rights we might not instead become a more punitive, aggressive and frightened society. We should take some time to consider that as an optional outcome of further legislation. Later this year there will be the formal launch of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights. I welcome that, not only because it is led by my good friend Trevor Phillips and many others known to noble Lords, but also because it will attempt to take forward the work of the existing commissions and become both more dynamic and progressive. I do not suggest that some of the former bodies were not, but it will seek to be. For nine years until 2001 I served on the Commission for Racial Equality, mostly under the chairmanship of my colleague and noble friend Lord Ouseley, who is not in his place today. Under his chairmanship we fought hard for the progress of race relations legislation and I was proud to be one of those who contended for the reform Act of 2001 which brought in the effects of institutional racism, the promotion of good race relations and public duty provisions. Those were significant achievements, ones I feel were worthy of the time and effort given to them. However, recalling those achievements caused me to reflect deeply on the amount of time consumed by the monthly meetings of the commissioners, and the paperwork and documentation that ate up our living hours as we struggled with just one of the five areas which the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights will attempt to address and get right. It has a huge remit in front of it: it must promote a human rights culture and good relations between individuals and communities; according to briefings sent to noble Lords it will try to shift institutional behaviour and transform public attitudes. It will seek to make human rights acknowledged as intrinsic to Britain’s prosperity, security and well-being. These are huge, noble tasks and if I recall anything of the pressures of the Commission for Racial Equality, it will take a wise group of men and women, perhaps meeting daily, to achieve them. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has left the Chamber for a moment, but I want to reflect briefly on last night’s discussion in this Chamber on the sexual orientation regulations. In his speech he commented on the pressure behind the regulations, saying that, "““it is unfortunate that the law has to be reformed by secondary legislation, since, as has been said, this reduces the scope for scrutiny of the detail of the regulations, and that the reason for this is that the Home Office unwisely included religious discrimination in the Equality Act without providing also for sexual orientation discrimination””.—[Official Report, 21/3/07; cols. 1321-22.]" My vote last night was cast in reflection of the fact that no matter how just, necessary and essential those regulations may well be, contentious and horrid regulations or legislation are never good law. I wonder whether there may not have been some reflection by the soon-to-emerge Commission for Equality and Human Rights on a better way to achieve all this, rather than to rush through processes which will cause many to continue to wonder whether we have given sufficient time or understanding to these critical issues, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said, might make us a more brutal and vindictive society. My noble friend Lady Young also referred to the celebrations being held this week and throughout the year to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade within the shores of the United Kingdom. It is something we should all rightly feel proud of. Last night with William Hague and Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills in another place, I was privileged to host in Portcullis House the screening of ““Amazing Grace””, the film of the life of William Wilberforce. There will be considerable discussion and debate in this House of the impact of all these issues over the rest of this year. That is something we should all welcome and want to participate in. But we are being encouraged to remember that the achievements of slavery reduction and removal200 years ago are almost as nothing to what is the contemporary slavery of today, and the pain it inflicts on multitudes of our fellow human beings, involving as it does the loss of their human rights. The Deputy Prime Minister said, in a speech delivered in another place during a debate to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery: "““The ILO estimates that a minimum of 12.3 million people are enslaved in the world today. Of those trafficked into forced labour, 43 per cent. are subjected to sexual exploitation, 32 per cent. to labour exploitation, and 25 per cent. to a mixture of both. The estimated value of that criminal activity is $32 billion””.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/3/07; col. 692.]" It is easy for us to shake our heads and feel irritated and complacent, and in some sense anguished about what others do abroad in human trafficking. Let me quote from the shadow Foreign Secretary,Mr William Hague, who said later in the debate that: "““It is important that we in Britain wake up to the gravity of the situation on our own doorstep. A fortnight ago, an official at the Lithuanian Ministry of Information declared that Britain is the No. 1 destination for gangs smuggling sex slaves from countries such as his own. Last year, when our police conducted a four-month operation to tackle sex trafficking, they rescued84 women—a small number in the scheme of things, but the list of their countries of origin tells its own sorry tale of the trail of misery. Those 84 women came from Albania, Brazil, China, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, India, Iran, Jamaica, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Namibia, Poland, Rwanda, Russia, Slovakia and Thailand””.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/3/07; col. 701.]" We have a lot to get right in this regard, and I question whether further legislation is really the way to achieve it. It may well be. With regard to the current slave trade and its ugly, damaging appearance in the life of this country among those people who choose to pay for services—for which they should not wish—from others trafficked from around the world, I only ask whether it is legislation or culture change that will achieve this. The noble Lord, Lord Lester, said that one of the key ambitions of a new UK bill of human rights would be improved citizenship. We would all want to affirm that as appropriate; we desire it, and we would seek it. I shall refer to another legal expert. A Lenten talk was given on Radio 4 on 14 March by no less a figure than Cherie Booth, in her role as president of Barnardo’s. She said: "““Fifteen year-old Andy from Newry in Northern Ireland was brought before the court for attempting to attack the police. As part of a community responsibility order, he met with police, fire service and ambulance crews who told him what it’s like to be ""under attack from hooligans when they are trying to save lives. Andy began, for the first time, to appreciate the risks they took and the impact of his behaviour. He wrote a letter of apology to the police and joined the Fire Brigade cadets for a six week programme on public safety. The programme also helped Andy look at the things in his life which made him angry and develop ways of coping with these—within his family, where both his parents had problems with substance misuse, and at school, where he was frequently in trouble. Andy is accepting responsibility for his actions—but there’s another way to look at this. The community is accepting its responsibility for Andy as well. All too often society wants to draw a ““them and us”” line between offenders and victims without recognising that offenders are often victims themselves. We can’t ignore the fact that over a half of all 15 to 17 year-olds in custody and a third of all prisoners have been in care at some point in their lives, nor that the majority of women in prison say they’ve been victims of domestic or sexual abuse. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently called on society to recognise the part it has to play in the journey of reform and rehabilitation that the offender needs to embrace, because that has to be the fundamental goal of the criminal justice system. Those who have been through our courts and prisons need to be helped to return to society as full and contributing members””." I quote that story because I want more than ever to see us achieve, with the continued downward and upward pressure on human rights—we should all be keen in that endeavour—less of the weight of law and more of an opportunity for responsibility to balance rights. My concern is that a UK Bill of Rights and the continuing regulatory rights culture that we have seen around us, and all the pressure it brings to stand up for, defend and even litigate for rights, has not necessarily moved us to understand the place of duty, responsibility and fair citizenship.