Saturday 4 October 2014

Why We Need The Human Rights Act

There seems to be some confusion over the Conservative plan to pull out of the European convention on Human Rights Act if they are re-elected next year.
In the aftermath of the second World War, European countries created the European convention on Human Rights to protect the continent against totalitarianism and the rise of another Nazi party which included the right not to be tortured or enslaved, forbidding degrading treatment or punishment, the right to liberty and security of the person, the right to marry, the right to a fair trial, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression, prohibits slavery and forced labour, and grants and freedom of assembly and association.
These were universal rights and everyone is equal and that is where the confusion starts because of the universal status which means it applies to everyone from the law abiding citizen to prisoners and criminals.
It was the Human Rights Act that stopped the extradition of Apsergers Sufferer Gary McKinnon to the USA for hacking Pentagon computers and allowed soldiers to sue the Government for sending them to Iraq without the correct equipment.
It protects the right for citizens to protest so we must ask why the Conservative Government are so keen to rid themselves of what is sees as shackles to it going about its business.
It proposes to scrap all the above to stop the rights of the many to hit the few who made the headlines in well publicised cases over the last few years, mostly the foreign born Islamic preachers.
To be allowed to remove the Human Rights Act would allow the Conservatives to further destroy the lives and livelihoods of millions who it is already been hitting hard.
Liberated from their human rights obligations, this Government will have a field day riding roughshod over the public it has already spent the last 4 years demonising, the low paid, ill, disabled, poor, unemployed, students and old people in our nation, and it should be shocking that it is even being discussed and viewed as a very dark day that this is being put forward as a valid policy is a very depressing show of where we are today.
There should not be any confusion because if you support scrapping it then you have obviously not understood the implications of not being protected by it anymore.

7 comments:

Jon Danzig said...

Why is the European Convention on Human Rights such a problem for the United Kingdom, and not the other 46 countries who have also signed up to it?

See my commentary:

www.humanrights.mythexploder.com

Lucy said...

Nice Post Jon, just hope more of us share our feelings and see the Government for what it is and don't give them the chance to scrap it.

Lucy said...

I'm sure your gun obsession is getting worse.

Lucy said...

Extreme right politics and guns always work out well.

Jon Danzig said...

I think it's more helpful to discuss specific examples of how our Human Rights Act has helped British citizens:

* The Human Rights Act has brought to account UK police for failing to investigate human trafficking and rape cases.

* Thanks to the Human Rights Act, UK law was changed to prevent rape victims from being cross-examined by their attacker.

* It’s because of the Human Rights Act that the right was established in the UK for an independent investigation to take place following a death in prison.

* Human rights laws have also helped patients gain to access life-saving drugs and held hospitals to account when failures in mental-health care has directly led to suicide.

* In the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal, 100 claims were made invoking the Human Rights Act claiming that gross or degrading treatment of patients, mostly elderly, had caused or hastened their deaths.

* Human Rights laws have also helped to establish that failing to properly equip British soldiers when on active duty abroad was a breach of their human rights.

I am not convinced that these or similar cases would have prevailed without our Human Rights Act; I certainly don't think they would have got anywhere under the 1689 Bill of Rights.

And the examples above are just that - some examples. There are many other cases where British people have needed our Human Rights Act to protect them against the excesses or failures of the State.

Lucy said...

European's would scrap your second amendment within the first minute. I would also push for a ban on Hawaiian shirts.

Lucy said...

We would also make you say route and aluminum properly.