UK Bill of Rights

Graham Allen Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams.

A Bill of Rights is not a modern invention. Indeed, next year we celebrate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, which was agreed not too far away from here and is the root of so much that then followed. The need to enshrine our basic rights against arbitrary executive power is just as necessary and just as resisted as it was all those centuries ago. It was not until after the English civil war that, in 1689, the expression “Bill of Rights” was first used, in an important statute passed to define the role of the Crown. One hundred years later, it was used not for a separate list but as the beating heart of the constitution of the United States. These days, the expression is used to refer to a document that has some degree of constitutional status and that declares the fundamental rights of all people by virtue of their common humanity. A Bill of Rights is the human engine of our democratic settlements, without which our constitutions, written or not, are just hollow organisational charts.

Those rights are described in different ways: basic, fundamental, inalienable, inherent or natural rights, the rights of man or, in a limited context, constitutional rights. We know that the expression “human rights” was probably first used in Tom Paine’s translation of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. If I may, I will wish Thomas Paine a happy 277th birthday for tomorrow. He was England’s greatest political philosopher and democratic export, and I dedicate this debate to him.

The United Kingdom added to that rich vein in the 1940s by gifting to the rest of Europe its convention on human rights, to enshrine the inalienable rights that Tom Paine first put into words in 1791. That convention was written by British lawyers and British politicians, and has been adopted by 43 countries and over 800 million people. The United Kingdom then ratified the convention in 1951 and with the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998, the European convention on human rights was repatriated into UK law, allowing UK citizens to seek redress in UK courts for human rights offences covered by the ECHR.

Of course, that is not the end of the story. As someone involved in this field on the Front Bench in the early 1990s, I can personally testify that the intention was to build on the ECHR and move forward to a British Bill of Rights. However, the Executive power of today is just as anxious as King John to avoid constraint and definition of its power. Our failure to put in place that fundamental of democracy, a separation of powers, means that the Executive have a control of Parliament that even Charles I could only have dreamed about. The Government who should be held to account by citizens are the very body who authorise the rights of those citizens. That contradiction presents its own danger. As Professor Robert Blackburn wisely said:

“The truth is that governments of all persuasions have a vested interest in moulding our constitutional arrangements in a manner that suits their own political, financial, and administrative convenience...Nothing is more dangerous than corrosions of liberty dressed up as constitutional safeguards.”

None the less, in March 2011 the Government established a Commission on a Bill of Rights that would

“investigate the creation of a UK Bill of Rights that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in UK law, and protects and extend our liberties.”

Sadly, the commission was unable to agree on a way forward. That has allowed the short-termist nature of our daily media and daily politics to wash over and, to some degree, trivialise the rights agenda.

Today, I want to rebalance that, to look past the immediate squabbles and restate why our rights are important, and why we would want to continue to have them written down and ensure that they remain so in future. Anthony Lester, as always, finds the right words. He says that

“the Human Rights Act gives necessary protection to the civil and political rights of everyone, and not only unpopular or vulnerable minorities—the right to life, and freedom from torture or other ill-treatment, to liberty without arbitrary arrest or detention; to freedom of speech, assembly and association, fair trials by independent and impartial courts respecting the presumption of innocence, to personal privacy, home and private property, to education, and to equal treatment without unfair discrimination”.

It takes politicians of very low quality indeed to turn such soaring principles into language that fails to excite voters, although we might have managed that somehow.

In 2002, the results of a Public Agenda national opinion poll in the United States showed that 67% of those interviewed felt that it was “absolutely essential” for ordinary Americans to have a detailed knowledge of their constitutional rights and freedoms, and 90% agreed that, after the 9/11 attacks,

“it’s more important than ever to know what our Constitution stands for”.

The report concluded that although the actual text of the constitution might be imperfectly captured in people’s heads,

“its principles and values are alive and well in their hearts.”

In America, citizens have a clear and steadfast understanding of where their rights originate—their Bill of Rights within a written constitution.

What about Britain? What would a poll of that nature look like here in the UK today? Would there be a wide consensus that a UK Bill of Rights would provide a baseline of common values to which the public could refer? A survey quoted by King’s college, London, in “Codifying—or not codifying—the United Kingdom constitution: The existing constitution”, a report written for the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, of which I am honoured to be the Chair, seems to support the notion that increasingly British public opinion is in favour of a UK Bill of Rights. It showed that most people agreed strongly or slightly with the view that

“Britain needs a Bill of Rights to protect the liberty of the individual”.

The figure rose from 71% in 2000 to 80% in 2010, so there is evidently a high and rising level of support for the idea of a Bill of Rights.

There is still work to be done, however, and there are issues that still need to be explored. We need to take the word out, past the fog of media short-termism and the excuse making and opportunism around particular aspects of rights in general. We need to assess, for example, whether our rights could be better articulated—perhaps the Minister will have something to say on that issue—as they are currently spread far and wide, in a host of different places.

We could learn from the United States. It is well known that Americans’ sense of civic duty goes hand in hand with being American. It is so much easier to fulfil that civic duty when someone has a clear sense of what is expected of them—of what they belong to and of who they are. Here in the United Kingdom, many of our responsibilities and duties already exist in statute or are woven into our social and moral fabric, and into common practice. A UK Bill of Rights—an extension of the Human Rights Act—would reflect their burgeoning importance in our democracy.

Bills of Rights are not just legal and constitutional documents; they provide ownership and promote citizenship. We are a society in constant flux, and a Bill of Rights would help to form a common bond across our increasingly mobile and diverse society by emphasising our togetherness, what unites us and our shared political values. As part of a post-Scottish referendum settlement, a Bill of Rights could be an important unifying force across all the nations of our Union. I believe that a Bill of Rights would also help to reinvigorate our democracy. A Bill of Rights would have a symbolic and iconic role, much like the one across the Atlantic. Endowing citizens with human rights as their birthright not only protects the rights of individuals, important though that is, but has the symbolic role of highlighting the fundamental principles of a democracy and signifying what a country such as ours stands for.

As well as returning rights to individuals, a Bill of Rights would be part of Government returning our democracy to those individuals. Again, as Thomas Paine said in “Rights of Man,”

“a government without a constitution is a power without right.”

Codifying our rights would help the British political system to be founded not on judicial archaeology by insiders but on a legitimate, open and transparent basis understandable to all. The history of Executive resistance to external rules and definitions shows the fragility of human rights law. We have human rights law at the moment, but we need to look after it, let alone extend it. History also shows the importance of entrenching democratic principles not with the passing whim of whomever happens to form a Government but in an enduring and overarching written settlement of our democracy—a written constitution.

I ask the Minister to join me and many others in restarting this debate. A UK Bill of Rights is the next step forward in securing the constitutional thinking that Magna Carta prompted nearly 800 years ago. Magna Carta should not be a relic, barely used, encased and on display; it should encourage further evolution, growth and strength within our democracy. We may go looking for a British Bill of Rights and yet find our soul and our liberty.