Rights
Living in the UK, we enjoy a range of entitlements which go beyond the civil and political rights in the European Convention on Human Rights (which is given further effect in UK law by the Human Rights Act) and which the Government recognises may be potential candidates in inclusion in any future Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.
A Bill of Rights and Responsibilities could point to key aspects of our welfare state – such as the National Health Service – which might help paint a fuller picture of the social and economic entitlements we enjoy as members of UK society. Further possible areas for inclusion are aspects of the criminal justice system such as victims’ rights; equality; good administration; children’s wellbeing; as well as principles of sustainable development in relation to our environment.
We plan to host discussion forums on the specific topics above (which are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3 of the Green Paper) over the coming weeks and months, but would be interested to know now:
- what you think the advantages and disadvantages would be of including economic and social rights, such as those which already exist as part of our welfare state; and
- what you think the advantages and disadvantages would be of including other areas, such as victims’ rights, children’s wellbeing or sustainable development in relation to our environment?
Please join the discussion below to let us know what you think.
Please note - The closing date for responses to the issues raised in the Green Paper is the 26 February 2010. This date will also be the cut-off point for adding comments to this online discussion.
Citizens’ rights are a good thing in a free and democratic society, but i have two observations:
1. I do not perceive that human rights abuses have been commonplace in the UK despite the lack of a comprehensive national constitutional bill of rights. Most of the abuses i can think of that do not constitute obvious criminality have been by the Government or its agencies and are concerned with arrest and detention of innocent persons where there is inadequate evidence. Further rights in this area, whilst worthy, have to be balanced with the need to detect and to some extent prevent crime.
2. There are many problems with some of the more esoteric rights, as one man’s freedom is another’s nuisance. I would like, for example, the right to enjoy a peaceful Sunday afternoon without listening to the repeated chimes of “Just one Cornetto” echoing around our village every five minutes, but I accept that some people are not bothered about this and are too lazy to go to the shops if they want an ice cream. This comes under “environment”, obviously.
Having had that rant to illustrate the point that what is good for the environment may be highly subjective, i would certainly support a zero-tolerance to litter. Everyone should have the right to live in a litter-free country.
I would like to see the right to private and confidential communication services protected as an unconditional right (per Article 8 of the ECHR).
Private and confidential communication underpins democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of association, trade and commerce.
The right to private communication confidentiality should include the details of content, sender, recipient, and location of communicating parties.
The events of the last 3 years, have seriously damaged the trust and confidence that UK citizens can have in their telecommunication providers.
The use of covert communication surveillance for marketing on hundreds of thousands of people and the web sites that served them by BT must never happen again (and the people who perpetrated those events must face prosecution).
How about the right to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of thought.
Without censorship?
I would like to see a law against an ISP using its position as a communication bearer being able to snoop globally on childrens and adults web data without a legal warrant. It seems the secret services need a legal warrant to be able to do some the things a private company can do without fear of the law in the communication industry within this country.
Customers should also be protected from themselves making bad choices when high level technological system such as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) can used to intercept a customers online browsing data. I believe the choice and the understanding is far too complex to be left in the average consumers hands to either opt-in or opt-out to this type of behaviour. There should be a law against it to protect their basic human right to privacy. I believe the system is open to misuse.
I agree that human rights are a good thing in theory/moderation, but I think it would be advantageous to have them condensed into one ’super-right’. This proposed ’super-right’ would consist of the golden rule, ‘we should do our best and try to, to the largest extent/degree possible/feasible, treat people who are not ourselves as we (ourselves) would prefer/enjoy more if we were treated in such a way as is most similar to the above’. Why wait? Rights are being abused as we speak. The ’super-right’ deserves a place on the statute book this month.
Thanks Government,
Sam D.
Why do we need a Bill of Rights? Ask yourself? Already there is a European Decleration of Human Rights which is considered to be of higher authority than any potential British legislation. In today’s society we experience a significant amount of freedom that people in other countries greatly desire. If this is a national debate then why so little interest? Surely this is an indication that the public are quite content with the amount of rights they receive as our highly vocal society surely would be expressing their views as they have on many other topical subjects.
It is true that certain rights/freedoms can be found to be incompatible with the effects of their exercise by individuals on others (Mill - quoted in the introduction to the Green Paper). Examples:
1. As a society we generally accept that freedom of speech can be curtailed by the law when we make an overtly racist remark.
2. We accept that people who break the law should be imprisoned, where appropriate, violating their freedom of movement.
3. We accept that families who are having difficulties in the care of their children should have their privacy temporarily violated by visitors from the State (social services).
However, this Green Paper seems to spend a great deal of time and effort making this point and arguing that we should all be more aware of it. Where is the proposed differentiation between the constitutional situation we have currently and what would be in place if a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities passed in the House?
Despite the concern about the proposed Bill being something of a statement of the obvious, there is a more important point to be made about the potential of legislation like this to confuse people rather than enlighten them. Is the purpose of it in reality an attempt to make people less prepared to fall back on their rights as they understand them? Is it to placate that faction of society who don’t believe in a human rights framework?
It could also look like an effort by the Government to subtly underline an ugly message - that British rights are for British citizens, i.e. those who agree to to live according to the proposed ‘rules of society’ which are set out here.
Extreme care must be taken to ensure that inalienable rights are not confused with contingent ones in the drawing up and explanation of this legislation. For example, no matter how another person fails to live up to their responsibilities to society, the Government, Parliament and the people have a responsibility - in law and ethics - to ensure they can practice their religion, enjoy freedom of movement where they have not committed a crime, not be tortured, be charged or released etc. These are fundamental human rights.
My final concern is that this particular executive is not well placed to formulate this legislation. Not when we have already seen its efforts to pass arbitrary legislation and its questionable human rights record over the past 8 years or so since 9/11.
Particularly in the light of the developing realisations of how govenrment and its MPs operate, surely the first ‘right’ of the citizen (assuming that freedom of speech is ‘given’) is to obtain clarity on the constitution under which we live.
The fact that the British constitution is largely unwritten and given our current state of affairs where its leniancy is easily availed of, then it would seem that now is the time for a written constitution, and one in which the values under which government operates is clearly defined.
I would suggest that the population mix and size and conditions of life and government are now so complex that we have lost sight of a set of national values, and that this situation makes a written constitution imperitive.
Local Government already has written constitutions. These were introduced at about the same time as the Human Rights Act was introduced. They identify rights and responsibilities of local government (and the local political associations that rn Councils) to citizens.
Often Council constitutions identify that they have complaint procedures. There is no statutory base for these. It would be a very small step to take to make Council constitutions subject to Roman Law.. and this would remove substantial ambiguity. It would also remove the need for the plethoria of complaint systems that government has established to ‘deal’ with complaints about local government.
We already have a bill of rights, which the Government ignores, we also have rights in the Magna Carta, which the Government ignores. We also have rights under the universal declaration of human rights, many of which are ‘conditional’, leaving the Government free to prevent them being utilised. Clearly this is an exercise in futility, as the Government will continue to bend/break the rules to suit it’s own needs regardless. There are many of us that do not beleive our rights are in any way conditional, but this will not stop future governments seeking to curtail them for their own benefit.
We all act and live within the HRA 1998 ona daily basis like it or not, and we also, we have been like it or not eroding our Magna Carta i;e The Divine Rights of Kings and and their sujects ever since we joining our biggest since the world war one employers and the controllers of our NHS Service Europe signed their “Peace Treaty.”
We now recieve from our Europe and Europeans as a right to us it is claimed, certain laws and other benifits given to us for our Eurpoens “directing” and then their “manageing and management” our NHS Services and all its “Held in Trust” for us “Lands and Properties” we are given FREE HEALTH CARE.
Puttin aside any discrepencies re the standard of NHS and all other dot gov sevices if any, our European Masters now feel a ” Declaration of Human Rights ” is needed to be made clair, and that Men and Woman should have greater freedoms, expressions, movements, etc; while honoring each other, but while they make it is increasinably and very difficult to complain, and complaint is made so difficult by the very bodies being our adjudicating courts, and also their reps to even establish by Law an HRA Breach upon an “Indivisual” or “Indivisual Groups” even in the face of very obvious and clare fact that a series of braches have been commited meanwhile these bodies are up holdng HRA Breaches upon themselfs or their other government agencies thereby fixing the data we call it.
The time has come for all of us involved up front or behind the sceens lik me, to now take note of these double sandards, bias, wanton lck of respect, and/also our errors at the Human Rights Act Law, and put them all right first, and then for us to then also revoke and invoke what we already have firmly enshrined and layed down in Law, which is the Human Responsibility Act; an Act and Bill of Legal Rights etc that is and has been already established, passed, and is already on the statues and Law Books in Europe and in the U K and in many other conracting parties country andto use what we already have, but it the “Human Responsbility Act” is hardly or never used or given a mentioned in our Cours, European Courts of Human Rights, or even given a mentioned by our American counter parts with their version of the Human Responsibilites Act, which they hold at and within Runny Mede their very own Law Society which is and always has been strongly connected to our Law Society. Society is a peoples I believe.
The Human Responsibilities Act is not the same as the Human Rights Act.
Signed; Elijah William Carr
Aka HRH Kng Judah
We must end the 28 days detention without charge law. In a free and democratic society, no matter what problems our society faces, the polive, the government, you, should not be able to keep a person any longer than 24 is there is not enough evidence to charge a suspect. The police shouls do their jobs properly, find evidence, then arrest, not arrest then find evidence. This kind of thing happens in China, a communist country it shouldn’t be happeneing here. it is one of the main priciples of the Magna Cartre. Our liberties and freedoms and stronger than the threat of terrorism. The problem with the terror laws it that they seem good to catch the bad guys but once the laws exist they can be used on any of us.
I am opposed to the new Bill of Rights and had already given my reasons to my local MP.
Over the course of months, it had become clearly obvious that the majorty of people are not even aware that we currently possess a Bill of Rights. Further, those who, for the most part, do not understand thier rights.
Needless to say, the moment the such a Bill is submitted to general population, I will be doing everything in my power to block it.
Existing failures lie not with the constitution but with the executive.
The ‘prerogative power’ is given to the monarch by the PEOPLE, under the Bill of Rights of 1689 and Magana Carta. The monarch agrees to protect our laws and customs under the Coronation Oath and the Constitution. Failure do so is TREASON against the people! We are protected from GESTAPO type (executive) law by the ‘prerogative’. Yet the majority of people are not aware of this, and the government had been exploiting the peoples ignorance.
Is Constitutional Change Treason?
The celebrated judge Sir Edward Coke said in 1610 that the crown cannot change any part of the common law. Indeed he went further and said that the crown cannot create any offence by proclamation (nowadays, by statute) that was not previously an offence under common law.
So in England – in a nutshell – since it was established that new rights can be conceded, but existing rights cannot be taken away, so it is arguable that any subsequent attempts to overthrow the laws and constitution of the United Kingdom must be treason .
Treason has been defined as any action which ‘attempts to overthrow or destroy the constitution’. The defining words used in the Treason Act of 1795 were put to the test in the case of R. v Thistlewood in 1820. On the face of it, such a definition would appear to rule out any referendum on the adoption of a foreign currency, since it must, ipso facto, deny us our constitutional rights of self-government. Indeed, the previous referendum on what was then called the common market may also have been unconstitutional, since the executive of the day and their legal advisors have subsequently admitted that they knew then that the true purpose of the common market was not free trade but full political union.
do we as citizens of UK have a right to say what happens in our country and government? or is it just the ‘important’ people who have the right?
Why not try with Human Rights in Family Law and
stop Establishment V Establishment Protocol no
Legal Speaks against the Establishment therefore
no parent can win.
Also medical evidence In the 21st Century Technology should disallow possibilities and
probabilities give families a right to the truth