A few days after the Court of Appeal ruled that Lotfi Raissi, a pilot wrongly accused of training 9/11 hijackers, could sue for compensation, I was told by a Southend resident that this was an example of how we were all a lot less safer because of the Human Rights Act: ‘Who is it this law is trying to protect, is it the criminals or the rest of us?’
We briefly discussed Raissi, how he had nothing to do with 9/11, but was jailed, condemned as a terrorist and could never again fly as a pilot. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time. If the Human Rights Act had eventually saved him, it could be a safeguard for all of us. But convincing people that the Human Rights Act is about all our rights as opposed to the criminal rights charter that the tabloids would have you believe isn’t exactly easy. The person I had spoken to agreed that the Human Rights Act might have been a good thing in Mr Raissi’s case, but I couldn’t say that she would agree with me that it is one of our most necessary laws for protecting our way of life.
One of David Cameron’s many naively populist moves shortly after winning the Tory leadership was to declare that a Tory government would repeal the Human Rights Act, abandon the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (which the act implemented into British law) and draw up a British bill of rights instead. This rash outburst is hardly mentioned any more, because abandoning the convention would also be breaking a key term of Britain’s membership of the European Union. The prospect of exiting the EU and all that would entail for Britain – and Cameron’s Tory party in particular – was perhaps a bit too bold for someone trying to keep his policies low profile.
But the idea of a British bill of rights has not been forgotten; certainly not by Brown’s Labour government. One of Brown’s first steps shortly after becoming prime minister was to begin an overhaul of Britain’s constitution, to include enhancing parliament’s powers and creating a bill of rights and duties. The aim behind all of this is to restore trust in government by making it more accountable to the people.
The difference between Labour’s proposed bill of rights and the Tories’, is that it won’t replace the European Convention but complement it. This is the right approach, because I cannot see how so-called British human rights ought to be more limited than so called European human rights because of our peculiar traditions or social norms. In fact, the human rights protected by the European Convention were mostly drafted by British hands back in 1950, and concepts such as a right to liberty, freedom from torture and a right to a fair trial hardly sound un-British.
The complementary element that a bill of rights could bring is a clear set of principal rights and duties not just between the citizen and the state, but between each one of us. These might include rights of community, education and expression, but also duties such as those of tolerance and respecting other individuals’ rights.
This is a fine aim on paper, but it will get nowhere, unless most people understand and relate to it as well. If a short and clear bill of rights were drafted, then it could become the one legal document that most people could recite almost by heart, as so many Americans are able to do with theirs. We would all feel stronger and safer knowing what rights we can all rely on. Until then, we still have a job to do in defending the Human Rights Act against the exaggerated attacks of the Tories and the lazy journalism of right-wing columnists.
Kevin Bonavia is Labour’s parliamentary candidate in Rochford and Southend East