Rights

Tom Griffin (London, OK): It's an interesting reflection on the rise of the database state that some of the best reporting on UK civil liberties these days can be found in the pages of online I.T. magazine The Register.

In the latest example, writer John Ozimek follows up the case of former head teacher John Pinnington, which he argues "takes the UK one step closer to becoming an 'informant society' along the lines of the former East Germany or Soviet Union.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights has today published a report on the prospect of a UK bill of rights.

Committee chairman Andrew Dismore argues that the report's recommendations offer a solution to the thorny question of how such bills should deal with social and economic rights.

The Human Rights Act is a parliamentary model of human rights protection. Courts have an important role, but parliament has the final say.

Our new bill of rights could build on this unique relationship between the courts and legislature. It could provide, for example, that economic and social rights are not directly enforceable by individuals against the government, but make it the government's duty to achieve the progressive realisation of those rights, with a limited role for the courts to review the measures taken. 

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): You can hardly have failed to notice that the children’s commissioners for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have combined forces in a joint report to the United Nations to condemn the treatment of children in the United Kingdom. But you may not have taken on board their central message, and you very likely missed an equally significant report last week on the effects of poverty on education and social mobility in the UK.

The point of this unprecedented initiative is to insist that children have human rights, separate from the family, and that their rights are being systematically abused. The commissioners have presented a dossier of human rights abuses of British children in violation of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) that, in the words of the Guardian report (Monday, 9 June) have “denied hope and opportunity to many of Britain’s 14 million children and adolescents”.

The report is to the UN committee set up to review compliance with the Convention; in its last review of the UK, in 2002, the Committee found “serious violations” of the Convention. An additional report from the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, a coalition of more than 100 civil society organisations, says that the government has passed 30 laws that breach the Convention since then.

The biggest complaints centre on the punitive juvenile justice system and public attitudes that demonise adolescents. But there is a deeper-lying cause for complaint and concern. At a Sutton Trust conference on social mobility in New York last week Ed Miliband, the Cabinet Office minister, and UK educationists, heard the results of a massive study of children born in the UK and US in 2000 and 2001. The study found that the damaging effect of being in a low-income home was more pronounced in the UK than in the US and that “there is a stronger income differential in the UK than in the US,” meaning that (as a US academic told the conference) “there are more behavioural problems among low-income children in the UK”, and that the transition from home to school was harder, especially for boys. (The gap between the UK and the US would be even wider were it not for Britain’s childcare provision.)

Mira Merme (Switzerland): The story in the Sunday Times that Tate and Lyle is looking to sell its pension-assets and obligations-to a Goldman Sachs controlled pension buy-out specialist should have employees' alarm bells ringing loudly. Analyse the interests here:

- shareholders want to minimise obligations, but are sadly dependent on the cooperation of the employees-the beneficiaries of those obligations

-for the continued good-functioning of Tate and Lyle;

- the Goldman Sachs controlled pension buy-out firm will want to pay out as little as possible while earning high fees on the fund

- the buy-out firm has no relation of dependency on Tate and Lyle employees. This uncoupling means that in effect the pensioners will have no ability to have any say in their own ownership which in effect will cease to be an ownership model and will be a model where the goodwill and generosity of Goldman Sachs will determine their livelihoods.

This "upside we win, downside you lose" cavalier dealing with people’s livelihoods by the financial sector is old news as the credit crunch has already shown how new instruments for “managing risk” have uncoupled assets from liabilities with predictable outcomes as in the current credit crunch. It happened on mortgage securitisation, on Collateralised Debt Obligations and through Special Investment Vehicles. Yet core reform has still not taken place and as we can see by this latest proposal the lesson has not been learned. The financial sector continues to feign surprise when the impacts are so negative on the rest of the population.

Claire O'Brien (Florence, EUI): Brown will not come back from this. £120 cashback or not, his premiership appears to draw closer to twilight with every passing day. The one thing that could resurrect it would be to set a fresh progressive course for Labour and for Britain in tomorrow's draft Queen's speech. It seems inconceivable this will happen. Which means a new leader, from a new generation, who can articulate that agenda is essential. It is clear by now that if Labour does not offer a new direction, the Tories will.

Andrew Blick on Swimming with the tide: Democraticisng the places where we work by Chris Ward and Zoe Williams, Compass.

(Swimming with the tide, Compass, March 2008, 34pp)

Alexandra Runswick (London, Unlock Democracy): For me the last six months have felt like death by a thousand government consultations. Unlock Democracy has been responding to consultations on the role of the Attorney General, war powers, treaty ratification, how petitions should be used in local government, freedom of information regulations and flag flying to name but a few. But there is one that seems to have disappeared without a trace: on the right of prisoners to vote.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The Ministry of Justice has announced a " major clean-up of meaningless and defunct laws from the Statute Book" All or part of 328 Acts of Parliament that are  masquerading as live laws are to be removed under the Statute Law (Repeals) Bill. Jack Straw says:

Edward McMillan-Scott (Yorkshire & the Humber, MEP): David Miliband must tell it like it is. He is talking about supporting democracy and human rights around the world but China is the world's biggest country and it is the biggest tyranny. So far, the British government has failed to get it straight on the Olympics because of the shadow of the London Games in 2012. With nearly seven million in forced labour or prison camps, widespread religious persecution and ruthless suppression of any dissent, China is not a fit host for the Olympics. The Olympic Charter starts by insisting on "universal fundamental ethical principles" and David Miliband should tell the Olympic movement to stand by that.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): It seems that the BBC has an advance copy of the speech Jack Straw is due to make at George Washington University. He will say:

Most people [in the UK] might struggle to put their finger on where their rights are. The next stage is to look at whether we need to articulate those rights which are scattered across a whole host of places. We can learn from the American example, particularly from the concept of civic duty. We want to elevate them in a new status in a constitutional document. It is much easier to perform your civic duty when you have a clear sense of what is expected of you

David Beetham (Manchester, Democratic Audit): I agree with most of the substance of David Marquand's critique of Gordon Brown's constitutional reform agenda. It is based on his opening comments to the recent Rowntree seminar (see post by Stuart Weir and Andrew Blick) that I also attended. But I take issue with the terms he uses when he argues that we should embrace a wider campaign for democratic renewal. Concepts like ‘governance' and ‘sovereignty' belong more to the seminar room than the public forum, and are unlikely to arouse enthusiasm or wide support in the contemporary age. Better would be to take at face value the July 2007 Green Paper's claim to be ‘reinvigorating democracy', and make ‘democracy' the starting point rather than the afterthought of any reform programme. Democracy begins with the people, not with institutions, and with the equal rights of citizens to involve themselves in social and public life, both directly and through representative bodies and organisations of all kinds, whose authority derives from below.

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): We should welcome Gordon Brown's political predicament, for if he is regain the political high ground that he assumed on becoming Prime Minister, he now clearly needs to reassure liberal Britain that our liberties are safe in his hands. The government's plans for a 'British' Bill of Rights have caused concern because it was possible that here was another political issue on which there would be cross-dressing with Cameron's Tories, on a measure that would distinguish between 'citizens' and others in the protection of civil and political rights in the UK.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): It seems that Liberty have published a new report on surveillance and privacy with an important new poll on public views about it. Liberty seem to be rubbish at publicity. It came out a few days ago but the first I knew about it was in Henry Porter's column in today's Observer. The report is not on-line. The sooner a copy gets to OurKingdom the sooner we can report on it.