Debbie Moss (London, UCL): The Constitution Unit hosted a seminar yesterday to launch JUSTICE’s report (pdf) on the proposed British Bill of Rights. Director of Justice, Roger Smith, gave us the political context. Whilst all three parties are committed in principle to a Bill, confusion and incoherence characterise much of the debate. Cameron's proposal to repeal the Human Rights Act is, we were told, "intellectually unsustainable" and aimed primarily at currying favour with the Europhobes. Since the ECHR draws extensively on principles of English common law, it is hard to see what Cameron envisages as a more "British" alternative.
Any British Bill of Rights must be what has come to be called "ECHR plus". As well as including rights like trial by jury, the Convention could be updated, perhaps by ridding it of anachronistic references to "vagrants" and "alcoholics". The danger is that a Cameron-type document would curtail rather than enhance our liberties.
But Brown’s government is not helping by confusing the legal issue of rights with issues of values and identity. As Smith emphasised, a Bill of Rights must do exactly as it says: provide a clear statement of rights enforceable by the judiciary. In political terms this is hard to disentangle from much stickier issues. Professor Colin Harvey gave us an interesting perspective, whilst sounding a note of caution. The consultation on a Bill of Rights launched in his native Northern Ireland had an aim that was clear to everyone: peace. In Britain the political imperatives are less clear and the aims themselves contested. A Bill of Rights aimed at cementing national identity, for example, would encounter a number of problems, not least Alex Salmond. By introducing a “Scottish Bill of Rights”, the SNP could throw a real spanner in the workings of Brown’s “Britishness” project, especially if the Scottish bill were made more attractive with “bonus” rights such as free tertiary education.
The “national question” is, of course, simply one out of a whole herd of constitutional elephants to be dealt with. How, for example, will the Bill be entrenched? It would likely be ineffective without thorough constitutional reform. Entrenchment of these rights under the prevailing system of “Parliamentary sovereignty” might prove merely procedural. Only a written constitution, with real entrenchment, could truly guarantee the much-needed protection of rights and change the public culture so that citizens feel the rights belong to them even while their final adjudication in any dispute has to be in a court of law.
