Common Sense: Reflections on the Human Rights

COMMON SENSE: COMMON This short book brings together the first 10 articles in a series of blog posts about the Human Rights Act written or edited by Professor COMMON SENSE: Francesca Klug between January and May 2010. The series examines the origins and intentions of the HRA, how the Act works in practice REFLECTIONS ON THE and the context behind political debates about its future. The series REFLECTIONS ON THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT RIGHTS HUMAN THE ON REFLECTIONS was first published on the Guardian website and includes guest HUMAN RIGHTS ACT contributions by Shami Chakrabarti, Alan Miller, Monica McWilliams and Helena Kennedy QC. Fair Personal privacy trials Life Equal treatment under the law Free speech Liberty No slavery No torture Shami Chakrabarti Helena Kennedy Francesca Klug Monica McWilliams Alan Miller ISBN 978-0-946088-57-7 Published by Liberty (National Council for Civil Liberties) First published in June 2010 by Liberty Liberty The National Council for Civil Liberties 21 Tabard Street London SE1 4LA www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk Designed and produced by www.totalcoverage.coop ISBN: 978-0-946088-57-7 This short book is published by Liberty in support of the Common Values campaign. It represents the views of its authors and not the organisation’s policy. With thanks to the Guardian for kind permission to reproduce the articles. With grateful thanks to the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust for its generous support for this publication. Contents Preface by Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty 5 Introduction by Professor Francesca Klug 7 1: What’s in a name? Is the Human Rights Act a bill of rights by any other name? by Professor Francesca Klug 9 2: Party pieces Claims that the Human Rights Act is a creature of the left ignore long term support from the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives by Professor Francesca Klug 14 3: Human rights . for some Collusion in torture? The HRA, the courts and parliamentary sovereignty by Professor Francesca Klug 20 4: The Human Rights Act does protect us Officials are using the HRA as a scapegoat and those who hastily call for its replacement should pause to reconsider by Shami Chakrabarti 26 5: Who deserves human rights? Do our human rights apply in every situation – and should the HRA be replaced by a British Bill of Rights? by Professor Francesca Klug 29 3 6: Human rights an election issue Liberal Democrats are keen to set themselves apart from the Tories’ confused plan for replacing the Human Rights Act by Professor Francesca Klug 37 7: The Human Rights Act from a Scottish perspective Repealing the HRA would have negative consequences at global, UK and Scottish levels by Alan Miller 41 8: Human Rights Act underpins devolution The act formed a crucial part of the Northern Ireland peace deal. To tamper with it would be wrong and invite unnecessary discord by Monica McWilliams 44 9: Hung parliament shows need for a written constitution It is not another bill of rights we need but a written constitution. by Professor Francesca Klug 48 10: Human rights must not be the subject of coalition deals The Lib Dems should not be tempted to concede ground on rights in order to carve out victories on other areas of reform by Helena Kennedy QC 52 Appendix: The protection of freedom under the Human Rights Act: some illustrations 57 4 Preface The Human Rights Act (HRA) will soon have been in force for a decade. No modern Bill of Rights can have had such a testing infancy. Passed in 1998 in the first flush of optimism and reforming zeal of the New Labour Government, the Act drew on the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms championed by Britain in post-war Europe. We had long been able to invoke the protections of no torture, free speech, fair trials, personal privacy and equal treatment etc., but often only after the long road to the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In allowing these rights to pass directly into UK law, the HRA was “Bringing Rights Home”. Few people outside Government can claim to have played such an important role in the birth of the HRA as leading LSE academic Francesca Klug who edits this collection of reflections originally published by the Guardian. The HRA’s political parents soon appeared impatient with its checks on executive power. After the Twin Towers’ atrocity only eleven months later, the Act was sometimes the sole practical protection against internment, evidence gathered through torture and breathtakingly broad police powers passed in freedom’s name. However, the HRA’s relative success in mitigating the worst excesses of Britain’s War on Terror, allowed hawkish critics to present it as a charter for the undeserving. These political and media pundits stubbornly ignored the cases in which journalists, gay people, victims of crime, children and homeless people were all protected by the Act. Despite binding disparate elements together with the language of rights and freedoms, the new Coalition Government faces a conundrum in relation to the HRA. Whilst the Liberal Democrats have been its greatest champions, parts of the Conservative party 5 have run it down, either because of its protections or in spite of them. As the pieces in this collection demonstrate, political attacks on the HRA have rarely come with “progressive” intent but just as every corporal bears a field-marshal’s baton in his knapsack, each vainglorious lawyer stows a constitutional draftsman’s pen. As the Coalition agreements fail to make the HRA non­ negotiable, other voices must now do so. Whilst the Labour Party begins a new conversation about its future, it is to be hoped that it might learn to love one of the prouder legacies of its time in Government, a little more. Shami Chakrabarti Director of Liberty June 2010 “Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected” Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776. 6 Introduction At the beginning of this year the Guardian asked me if I would like to start my own series on Comment is Free, titled Blogging the Bill of Rights. The context was the competing British bills of rights and responsibilities that the then Labour Government, and Conservative Opposition, were proposing. Labour was said to support a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities to build on the Human Rights Act (HRA); the Conservatives to replace it. The Liberal Democrats meanwhile, the party with the longest and most consistent support for the HRA, expressed caution about proposals for a specifically British Bill of Rights if it were aimed at sidestepping international human rights standards or restricting civil rights to British citizens, rather than all the human beings who live here. I was asked to explain the context and background to these events based on my academic research and experience as an independent advisor to the Government on both the HRA and a British Bill of Rights. What were the origins and intentions behind the HRA? What were the historical developments which led up to its introduction? Was there single or multi-party support for this legislation? Is the HRA a bill of rights by any other name or is it merely the technical incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law? Is the HRA solely aimed at enhancing the liberty of the individual against the state or does it also require the state to provide protection and support for vulnerable individuals and groups in order to realize rights in practice? What would be the implications of repealing the HRA and introducing a specifically British bill of rights? How would this affect the well-entrenched devolution settlements in Scotland and Northern Ireland? Where do responsibilities fit in? This pamphlet reproduces the first ten articles in the series, each of which attempt to address one or more of these questions. In some cases we have changed the title from the original to more 7 clearly signal the content of the piece. They are reproduced in the order in which they were published. Four of the articles are written by ‘guest columnists’: the Director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, the Chairs of the Scottish and Northern Ireland Human Rights Commissions, Alan Miller and Monica McWilliams and the QC Helena Kennedy. Each external contributor provides a unique insight into the current debate from their particular perspective. We have also included an appendix summarising some of the impact of the case-law under the HRA, produced by Helen Wildbore, research officer for Human Rights Futures at the LSE. With the new Coalition Government, the question of a so-called ‘British Bill of Rights’ has now been transferred to a Commission but the issue is still current and pressing. Whilst the Guardian’s Blogging the Bill of Rights series will continue, this pamphlet is offered as an aide to deciphering the background and intricacies of the current debate. Professor Francesca Klug Director, Human Rights Futures LSE June 2010 8 What’s in a name? Is the Human Rights Act a bill of rights by any other name? Francesca Klug guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 January 2010 David Cameron’s well-aired pledge1 to introduce a British Bill of Rights is not as novel as it is seems. He is only the latest in a line of What’s in a name? Opposition leaders to wave this flag. First in the queue was his mentor, Margaret Thatcher, whose 1979 Manifesto promised all- party talks on “a possible Bill of Rights.”2 Once in power, this commitment evaporated.

FAQ: Brexit and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights Part One: What is the Charter? June 2018 Contents Q: What is the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights? A: At the Cologne European Council in June 1999, the European Council adopted a decision on the drawing up of a Charter of The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. That decision stated: Fundamental Rights brings together in a single “There appears to be a need, at the present stage of the Union’s document the fundamental development, to establish a Charter of fundamental rights in rights protected in the order to make their overriding importance and relevance more EU. It was proclaimed in visible to the Union’s citizens”. 2000 and became legally binding in 2009. Although The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (the Charter) brings together in a there is overlap between single document the fundamental rights protected in the EU. The Charter the EU Charter and the sets out rights and freedoms under six titles: Dignity, Freedoms, Equality, European Convention on Solidarity, Citizens’ Rights, and Justice. The accompanying Explanatory Human Rights / the UK Notes are “a valuable tool of interpretation intended to clarify the Human Rights Act, there are important procedural provisions of the Charter” and they set out the sources of the provisions and substantive differences. in the Charter. However, legal experts have commented that, “The Charter is often described as a strand-tying document … However, the This FAQ discusses: characterisation of the Charter thus, as a tidying or strand-tying exercise only, tends to underplay its importance” (C Gallagher, A Patrick and K • The background to O’Byrne 2018 at para 2.12).

'Opposition-Craft': an Evaluative Framework for Official Opposition Parties in the United Kingdom Edward Henry Lack Submitte

‘Opposition-Craft’: An Evaluative Framework for Official Opposition Parties in the United Kingdom Edward Henry Lack Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of PhD The University of Leeds, School of Politics and International Studies May, 2020 1 Intellectual Property and Publications Statements The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. ©2020 The University of Leeds and Edward Henry Lack The right of Edward Henry Lack to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 2 Acknowledgements Page I would like to thank Dr Victoria Honeyman and Dr Timothy Heppell of the School of Politics and International Studies, The University of Leeds, for their support and guidance in the production of this work. I would also like to thank my partner, Dr Ben Ramm and my parents, David and Linden Lack, for their encouragement and belief in my efforts to undertake this project. Finally, I would like to acknowledge those who took part in the research for this PhD thesis: Lord David Steel, Lord David Owen, Lord Chris Smith, Lord Andrew Adonis, Lord David Blunkett and Dame Caroline Spelman. 3 Abstract This thesis offers a distinctive and innovative framework for the study of effective official opposition politics in the United Kingdom.

BRIEFING PAPER Number 06399, 17 December 2019 By Richard Kelly Father of the House Sarah Priddy Inside: 1. Seniority of Members 2. History www.parliament.uk/commons-library | intranet.parliament.uk/commons-library | [email protected] | @commonslibrary Number 06399, 17 December 2019 2 Contents Summary 3 1. Seniority of Members 4 1.1 Determining seniority 4 Examples 4 1.2 Duties of the Father of the House 5 1.3 Baby of the House 5 2. History 6 2.1 Origin of the term 6 2.2 Early usage 6 2.3 Fathers of the House 7 2.4 Previous qualifications 7 2.5 Possible elections for Father of the House 8 Appendix: Fathers of the House, since 1901 9 3 Father of the House Summary The Father of the House is a title that is by tradition bestowed on the senior Member of the House, which is nowadays held to be the Member who has the longest unbroken service in the Commons. The Father of the House in the current (2019) Parliament is Sir Peter Bottomley, who was first elected to the House in a by-election in 1975. Under Standing Order No 1, as long as the Father of the House is not a Minister, he takes the Chair when the House elects a Speaker. He has no other formal duties. There is evidence of the title having been used in the 18th century. However, the origin of the term is not clear and it is likely that different qualifications were used in the past. The Father of the House is not necessarily the oldest Member.

Western Europe Great Britain National Affairs JL HE DOMINANT EVENT of 1983 was the general election in June, which gave the Conservatives an overall majority of 144 seats. The election results led to the immediate eclipse of Michael Foot as Labor leader and Roy Jenkins as head of the Liberal-Social Democratic alliance; Neil Kinnock took over as Labor head and David Owen as leader of the Social Democrats. The Conservative victory was attributable in part to a fall in the inflation rate; in May it stood at 3.7 per cent, the lowest figure in 15 years. The "Falklands factor" also contributed to the Conserva- tive win, in that the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher appeared resolute in the pursuit of its aims. Finally, the Conservative victory owed something to disunity in Labor's ranks. The extreme right-wing parties fielded about 66 per cent fewer candidates in 1983 than in 1979; there were 59 National Front (NF) candidates, 53 British National party candidates (this party had broken away from the NF in 1980), and 14 can- didates belonging to other right-wing groups. The extreme-left Workers' Revolu- tionary party fielded 21 candidates. In October Home Secretary Leon Brittan announced plans to raise the electoral deposit to an "acceptable minimum," thus making it more difficult for extremist candidates to run for office. A report issued in October by the national advisory committee of the Young Conservatives maintained that "extreme and racialist forces are at work inside the Conservative party." Despite this, however, Jacob Gewirtz, director of the Board of Deputies of British Jews' defense and group relations department, indicated in December that in recent years the focus of antisemitism in Britain had shifted dramatically from the extreme right to the extreme left.

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS ANNUAL REPORT July 1,1996-June 30,1997 Main Office Washington Office The Harold Pratt House 1779 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10021 Washington, DC 20036 Tel. (212) 434-9400; Fax (212) 861-1789 Tel. (202) 518-3400; Fax (202) 986-2984 Website www. foreignrela tions. org e-mail publicaffairs@email. cfr. org OFFICERS AND DIRECTORS, 1997-98 Officers Directors Charlayne Hunter-Gault Peter G. Peterson Term Expiring 1998 Frank Savage* Chairman of the Board Peggy Dulany Laura D'Andrea Tyson Maurice R. Greenberg Robert F Erburu Leslie H. Gelb Vice Chairman Karen Elliott House ex officio Leslie H. Gelb Joshua Lederberg President Vincent A. Mai Honorary Officers Michael P Peters Garrick Utley and Directors Emeriti Senior Vice President Term Expiring 1999 Douglas Dillon and Chief Operating Officer Carla A. Hills Caryl R Haskins Alton Frye Robert D. Hormats Grayson Kirk Senior Vice President William J. McDonough Charles McC. Mathias, Jr. Paula J. Dobriansky Theodore C. Sorensen James A. Perkins Vice President, Washington Program George Soros David Rockefeller Gary C. Hufbauer Paul A. Volcker Honorary Chairman Vice President, Director of Studies Robert A. Scalapino Term Expiring 2000 David Kellogg Cyrus R. Vance Jessica R Einhorn Vice President, Communications Glenn E. Watts and Corporate Affairs Louis V Gerstner, Jr. Abraham F. Lowenthal Hanna Holborn Gray Vice President and Maurice R. Greenberg Deputy National Director George J. Mitchell Janice L. Murray Warren B. Rudman Vice President and Treasurer Term Expiring 2001 Karen M. Sughrue Lee Cullum Vice President, Programs Mario L. Baeza and Media Projects Thomas R.

LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog: Five minutes with Shami Chakrabarti: “Not guaranteeing the rights of EU nationals isn’t politics – it’s Page 1 of 3 cruelty” Five minutes with Shami Chakrabarti: “Not guaranteeing the rights of EU nationals isn’t politics – it’s cruelty” In October 2016, the leader of the UK’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, appointed Shami Chakrabarti as Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales. In a discussion with British Politics and Policy editor Artemis Photiadou and EUROPP’s Tena Prelec, she reflects on the challenges and advantages of the position, the situation faced by EU citizens living in the UK, and the key issues on the horizon for British politics. How have you found the transition from being a high-profile practitioner to being a frontline politician? It’s a major transition even though I was a very public practitioner and a very activist practitioner, and at times saying very difficult things, during the War on Terror for example. Even so, becoming partisan at this moment, when the referendum campaign was happening and when there was a lot of strife within the Labour Party, was quite something. And, of course, our media is not exactly the most kind or fair – the difficult transition is about learning to wear more armour emotionally. It’s really the temperature of the scrutiny – and sometimes abuse – that was possibly the bigger challenge. In terms of the actual skillsets and work, that doesn’t seem such a difficult transition. Because solving legal problems and applying law to policy is something I was reasonably familiar with first as a government lawyer, then as a human rights lawyer, and then as Director of Liberty.

Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP Twenty years of the Human Rights Act: Extracts from the evidence Contents 1 ECtHR Judgments against the UK: the effects of the HRA 2 2 Relationship of UK Courts and ECtHR 4 3 Using the ECHR in the UK courts 5 4 Judgments on rights 7 5 Wider policy changes brought about through individual legal cases 8 6 The Human Rights Act and Parliament 9 7 The Human Rights Act and Legislation 11 Parliamentary scrutiny of legislation 12 The process when UK courts consider legislation is not compliant with the Convention 12 8 Section 6 of the Human Rights Act 14 Change secured without using court proceedings 15 Training in Human Rights 16 9 Further issues raised in evidence 18 Incorporation of other human rights treaties? 18 The definition of public authority 18 Access to justice 19 Freedom of Religion and Belief 20 Wider Understanding of Rights 21 2 Twenty years of the Human Rights Act: Extracts from the evidence 1 ECtHR Judgments against the UK: the effects of the HRA Box 1: Lord Irvine of Lairg, House of Lords Second Reading Debate, 3 Nov 1997 “Our legal system has been unable to protect people in the 50 cases in which the European Court has found a violation of the convention by the United Kingdom. That is more than any other country except Italy. The trend has been upwards. Over half the violations have been found since 1990.”1 Source: HL Deb, 3 Nov 1997, col 1228 Box 2: Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law […] In 2017 only 0.2%, 2 out of all 1,068 judgments given by the Strasbourg Court found a violation by the UK, and in 2016 this figure was 0.7%, 7 out of all 993 judgments.

Changes to legislation: There are currently no known outstanding effects for the Human Rights Act 1998. (See end of Document for details) Human Rights Act 1998 1998 CHAPTER 42 An Act to give further effect to rights and freedoms guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights; to make provision with respect to holders of certain judicial offices who become judges of the European Court of Human Rights; and for connected purposes. [9th November 1998] Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:— Extent Information E1 For the extent of this Act outside the U.K., see s. 22(6)(7) Modifications etc. (not altering text) C1 Act: certain functions of the Secretary of State transferred to the Lord Chancellor (26.11.2001) by S.I. 2001/3500, arts. 3, 4, Sch. 1 para. 5 C2 Act (except ss. 5, 10, 18, 19 and Sch. 4): functions of the Lord Chancellor transferred to the Secretary of State, and all property, rights and liabilities to which the Lord Chancellor is entitled or subject to in connection with any such function transferred to the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs (19.8.2003) by S.I. 2003/1887, art. 4, Sch. 1 C3 Act modified (30.1.2020) by Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Act 2020 (c. 2), ss. 2(8), 9(3) C4 Act modified (31.12.2020) by European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (c.

New Labour, Old Morality. In The IdeasThat Shaped Post-War Britain (1996), David Marquand suggests that a useful way of mapping the „ebbs and flows in the struggle for moral and intellectual hegemony in post-war Britain‟ is to see them as a dialectic not between Left and Right, nor between individualism and collectivism, but between hedonism and moralism which cuts across party boundaries. As Jeffrey Weeks puts it in his contribution to Blairism and the War of Persuasion (2004): „Whatever its progressive pretensions, the Labour Party has rarely been in the vanguard of sexual reform throughout its hundred-year history. Since its formation at the beginning of the twentieth century the Labour Party has always been an uneasy amalgam of the progressive intelligentsia and a largely morally conservative working class, especially as represented through the trade union movement‟ (68-9). In The Future of Socialism (1956) Anthony Crosland wrote that: 'in the blood of the socialist there should always run a trace of the anarchist and the libertarian, and not to much of the prig or the prude‟. And in 1959 Roy Jenkins, in his book The Labour Case, argued that 'there is a need for the state to do less to restrict personal freedom'. And indeed when Jenkins became Home Secretary in 1965 he put in a train a series of reforms which damned him in they eyes of Labour and Tory traditionalists as one of the chief architects of the 'permissive society': the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, reform of the abortion and obscenity laws, the abolition of theatre censorship, making it slightly easier to get divorced.