Humanity Counts, Not Citizenship - when it comes to respect, empathy and the law

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We need human rights, not citizens' rights

The government's green paper is muddled – if we are to avoid the disasters of history, human rights must never be contingent on responsibilities
o Chris Huhne
o guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 March 2009 10.00 GMT


The government is playing with Tory fire with its green paper on a bill of rights and responsibilities. The politics tell us all: this is a response to some judgments under the Human Rights Act that were criticised in the Tory tabloids, and which have shamefully led the Conservatives to suggest that they would repeal the act. The Human Rights Act merely incorporates the European convention on human rights into UK law, allowing British cases to be heard in UK courts. It is extraordinary that one of the founding nations behind the convention could become, if the Conservatives have their way, the sole signatory not to allow its own people access to its own courts to reach judgments on human rights.

As a political response to this populist nonsense from the Tories, the green paper muddles rights and responsibilities. Human rights (such as the right to a fair trial) are not and cannot be conditional, because by definition they are the minimum we should enjoy as human beings. So the idea that they might be made contingent on responsibilities mixes up the concept of human rights with citizens' rights. And this is the second element of danger: when the Tories talk about a British bill of rights, instead of human rights, do they mean more or fewer rights? I think we can reach our own conclusions from the recent words of shadow home secretary Chris Grayling, who said there should be "fewer rights, more wrongs".

Human rights matter. We should never forget why Eleanor Roosevelt and the many other doughty champions of the universal declaration of human rights in 1948 stressed human rather than citizens' rights. It was because of the history of the 1930s Germany, when the Nazis decided that Jews would no longer benefit from citizens' rights. They were beyond the pale. They were excluded from the normal protection afforded by the rule of law. Any group can suddenly be defined as undeserving of the rights of true citizens: black slaves in the United States, Jews and gays in Germany, Roma elsewhere. Only a firm commitment to human rights ensures that this can never happen again, and can never happen here.

On economic rights, the government is right to tread carefully. There is already a right to avoid destitution, but many other social and economic rights are matters of fierce political debate and inevitably involve issues of taxation and expenditure. These should be the centre of any vibrant democracy, and should not become the preserve of decisions by the judiciary. There may, of course, be a role for declaratory statements encapsulating any consensus in our society about those economic and social rights, but such a statement would ultimately be words not deeds. Asking judges to do politics would be a mistake... more