The Case for a Human Rights Commission

Extract from a speech in Westminster Hall following the Sixth Report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Session 2002-03

This is an important report that comes at a critical time for human rights in our society and throughout the west. I pay tribute to fellow Joint Committee members. We did not all agree all the time but we had an interesting journey in experiencing human rights throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world. I learnt a great deal and want to put on record my thanks to the Clerk and officials who serve the Joint Committee. They are a great credit to the House.

The events of 11 September held a mirror up to us all, not only in this country and the United States, but throughout the world. It forced us to see the consequences of advanced terrorism and prompted several responses. The paradox is that, while we are committed to creating a culture of freedom, democracy and human rights for others around the world, particularly at the moment in Iraq, human rights at home and in the United States are under what might be described as pressure.

We live in a time when we are exporting democracy and human rights, which serve us well and protect us. Homeland security exists in the United States to protect its citizens from the practices of fundamental terrorist regimes but the current situation involves sacrifices of some of our liberties to protect our rights to life. In discussing the importance of creating a human rights commission, it is relevant to see it in a wider context. That context is undoubtedly putting our own human rights under pressure.

It is essential to recognise how much the Government have done in the past six years. There have been huge advances in willing a stronger human rights culture, and it would be foolish not to recognise that from the start. As hon. Members may remember, I was in a different political party at the beginning of the 1997 Parliament. Along with voting against the minimum wage, that party was not content with the passage of the Human Rights Act 1998. The Conservatives probably do not now want to repeal the minimum wage legislation or the Human Rights Act, which goes to show how much has been achieved in six years through a courageous decision by the Labour Government when they came to power.

I regret that I did not recognise the merits of the Human Rights Act, and I must say again that life is a learning experience. What we learnt on the Joint Committee taught me just what a difference the Human Rights Act has made. The problem is what remains to be done. There is an important distinction between what can be done through legislation and establishing a culture. Legislation does not create a culture; it gives a culture parameters within which it can flourish and be nurtured. The purpose of a human rights commission, to judge by the evidence we heard, is to be one more tool in protecting human rights and ensuring that human rights issues are raised not only in the courts but at other levels. It is strange to reflect that, when we are telling the rest of the world that it needs to embrace human rights, we have not had the sense — I think that that is the appropriate word — to recognise that it would be good to ensure that our own garden was in order before we started to look at those of others.

Some members of the Joint Committee did not agree that we should have a human rights commission and that is an understandable point of difference. Although I do not share that view, I recognise that it is held as a matter of conviction and principle.

Others object to the proposal as they might have done to a human rights commission in Northern Ireland a decade ago, but that Commission has been an important part of the peace process and it continues to play an important part in reconciling minority groups within the whole culture of Northern Ireland. Most people in Northern Ireland, from both sides of the historical divide, say that the work of that commission has been substantively important and not significant only at the margins.

Those who object to a human rights commission might have said the same thing in relation to Scotland a decade ago. I pay tribute to the Government for establishing a Scottish Parliament, one of the consequences of the constitutional changes that they have made in the past six years. It is significant that the Scottish Parliament has responded to the Scottish people by saying, "Those people want a commission and we think it should happen." A Human Rights Commission has been established in Northern Ireland and commissions are proposed for Scotland and other parts of the country. Should not the people of England, who have the same needs, enjoy the same rights?

I believe the Government's commitment, in respect of the Human Rights Act, to creating a culture of human rights, but in what way are the people of England different from those of Scotland or Northern Ireland? It surely cannot be argued that Northern Ireland is a separate case because of its troubles historically. The conclusion would be that, if in the near or long-term future the peace process continued to work well, the Assembly should wind up the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. I do not think that the Government, or the Northern Ireland Assembly would advance such an argument.

Where does that leave people in this country? Arguably, they are in a considerably weaker position. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) spoke about some minority groups that, rightly, feel heavily discriminated against. The Government can take huge credit for their democratic principles in making constitutional changes, but the creation of Parliaments and Assemblies elsewhere is not enough. Those are the big changes, but they need to be followed through with significant changes to the infrastructure.

My hon. Friend referred to the ninth report of the Joint Committee published this week on the case for a children's commissioner. I understand that the Minister may not wish to comment on that matter this afternoon — it may be on a small scale in comparison with creating a Parliament in Scotland or a Welsh Assembly — but for the several million children of this country the absence of a children's commissioner is significant. It is interesting, and to the credit of the Government in creating the new constitutional changes, that the Welsh Assembly has created, enshrined in law and taken to its heart the Children's Commissioner for Wales.

Where devolution has been carried through, the devolved institutions want to create bodies to enshrine principles in law and to create a culture of human rights or children's rights. However, having had the necessary huge will, principle and commitment to create the big institutions, we are nervous about following through.

In relation to the children's commissioner, I have some experience of the matter because I was a founding trustee of ChildLine and because of my long association with it. It cannot be argued that we do not need a children's commissioner in England. Opposition Members worry about going too far with rights. As Esther Rantzen, the chairperson of ChildLine, said, people do get frightened and newspapers do stir up trouble when we talk about children's rights, so let us talk about children's needs.

Children have significant needs, as I have seen at ChildLine. We have had more than 1 million kids counselled for sexual, emotional and physical abuse and bullying in schools. Those issues need to be raised, and not only in the courts. It is often far too late when matters reach court. In the most tragic cases, the children are dead. Those issues need to be raised much earlier.

An umbrella organisation is required that can take those issues up on behalf of children. That is the role that commissions can play, whether for children or for human rights. It is critical that commissions be independent of Government. This Government and the Labour party have a proud tradition in the fields of social justice, fairness and equality, but some people look at the Government and are slightly nervous about the fact that we have become a bit tentative on the equality front. That is not a criticism. Sometimes, there can be good arguments for being tentative but, sometimes, when the case is made, there is a need to go further and to show commitment.

Mr. Cash : I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman but I am still puzzled, and not only on the point that I have already made about why we would not be able to provide whatever legislation was required to address these myriad problems. I am also deeply concerned about the range, extent and dimensions of human rights. Just now, the hon. Gentleman distinguished between a human rights commission and a children's commissioner but, if one looks at the Human Rights Act, one sees that there is almost no area of life that could not create yet another commission. Where do we draw the line?

Mr. Woodward : The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. That is obviously a criticism that we have heard. I believe that, if the Government intend to bring together the three existing equality commissions, which include the Disability Rights Commission and the Equal Opportunities Commission, the rightful place for a human rights commission is within an equalities commission. We in the Joint Committee found that there was wide scope for debate on the exact relationship between the two within one institution. Indeed, we only just, on balance, took a view that it was best to bring all the commissions together. My personal view, to answer the hon. Gentleman's question, is that it is very difficult to distinguish between an issue to do with equality and an issue to do with human rights. After all, the right to be treated fairly and equally — not to have special privileges or special treatment — seems a fundamental right that we could all expect to have.

That brings me back to the importance of the institution's independence. I do not want to rake over the coals, and I do not raise the issue for the purpose of political posturing, but let us take discrimination and the issue that has caused such controversy for the Conservative party and the Government — the repeal of section 28.

If we believe that people have a right to be treated fairly, we have a problem supporting something that makes that tougher for people who are gay. In an advanced democratic western culture, we should consider the desire to remove discrimination a good cause. It is sometimes troubling when political parties want to get behind discrimination. Some did so for what they regarded as principled motives — I disagree with their principles — but some were not quite so principled and it was clearly gross political expediency that motivated them.

None the less, what we needed over section 28 was an independent body that said, rightly, to either a Conservative or Labour Government, "This is discrimination. It is wrong and it should be removed. People are suffering, kids at school are being bullied, teachers, who might themselves be gay, are being bullied and young people are taking their lives because of it." This is not a political point. For those of us who thought that it was right to repeal section 28 some time ago, it is not even a human rights point. When one receives a letter from the parent of a teenager who has killed himself, it is not a matter of human rights, it is a question of life and death.

It is easy to trivialise such issues, to say that it concerns a minority group and that only a few people are affected. However, once one has read a letter from a parent whose child died because he or she was gay and was discriminated against, even one case is worth fighting for.

The hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) asks where we should draw the line. I am not going to draw a line. The point of creating a human rights commission is that it would be able to advise us on where the lines are and, in many cases, where they need to come down. We need to recognise the value of all our institutions. We might wish to improve the work of the Commission for Racial Equality, the Disability Rights Commission and the Equal Opportunities Commission; presumably that is the Government's purpose in considering merging them into one equalities commission. However, I do not think that anybody in his right mind would say that the work of the CRE, DRC or EOC is not important or will not continue to be important. If we establish a human rights commission, people will say exactly the same.

Of course, legislation was needed to create those institutions, and it will be needed to create a human rights commission. Such institutions take on the business of nurturing a culture — they make it wider and deeper — and of advancing issues of social justice.

A human rights commission would do much in that regard.

In our travels, we went to Australia, where we had a profound experience with the human rights commission. The Labour party there looks proudly on the achievement of the past Labour Government who were responsible for its creation in the way that, perhaps, our Government look at previous Labour Governments and say that one of the great achievements of the Attlee Administration was the establishment of the national health service. It is interesting to note that one of the first things that the not now so new Liberal Prime Minister wanted to do was to get rid of that commission. However, he found that he could not — the organisation was valued across Australia, not just by Labour politicians but by many in the Liberal party, too. It was supported with the warmth of feeling that people in this country have about the NHS. They thought that it was absolutely essential.

Some hon. Members may be familiar with the film "Rabbit Proof Fence", which looks at the way in which babies were taken away from Aborigine families from the early to the middle part of the previous century in order for some quasi-eugenics project to be practised. It is very moving and deeply disturbing. How did the subject come to light? Was it because political parties decided that it was a good campaigning issue? No. It was because the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in Australia took it up.

I return to the question of where I would draw the line. I would not draw the line — any more than a politician in Australia would be foolish enough to draw the line. The line should be drawn by those who feel that their human rights, their sense of social justice and their sense of being able to live in a society that is fair, are in some way being abused. They are the people who must draw the line and a human rights commission would help us to consider that.

It was interesting that Mr. Howard's Government did not get rid of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and I understand why the Australian Labour movement is so proud of its past. The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) spoke about our laws and our processes being a mirror of our culture. He is right, as he is on so many matters, although we disagree on this one. The absence of legislation to create a human rights commission and the processes that would be carried out by one, mirrors what we lack, not what we have. It therefore feels uncomfortable that, at a time when we are telling others to establish democracies and to protect human rights, we ourselves are nervous about establishing a human rights commission.

We have a wonderful young people's and children's unit and huge credit must go to the Ministers and staff who work on it and do a tremendous job. However, any pretence that that unit could do the same as an independent children's commissioner is stuff for the birds. People can talk to the Welsh commissioner about that, or to every charity that works for children if they do not believe me.

The work that the Joint Committee has done and the evidence that it took from people is interesting. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough mentioned discrimination. I suppose that some people in this country do not want to recognise the rights of minority groups. Some people take a similar view on prisoners — they think that the best thing to do would be to lock them up and throw away the key. I do not share that view but there are some people — we have all met them — who do.

It is regrettable that some take a similar, rather despicable view about some asylum seekers or about those who seek to become economic migrants to this country. I welcome such migrants to this country and I am sure that other hon. Members do, too. However, we all know of people who have an unfortunate view of people with a particular skin colour or those from particular countries, because they think that such people might be misfits.

There are also people who take an unpleasant view of people who happen to be gay, bisexual or transsexual. I encountered such people when we were repealing section 28. When I changed political parties, my brother — now sister — Lesley ended up on the front cover of The Sun and on other newspapers because he was a "freak". That was the term that was used about Lesley, who did not choose to be born inside the wrong body. He had the courage in his early 40s to change his body and to become a woman. For some reason, however, our culture decided to paste this person, who had gone through the most terrible, agonising childhood and early adulthood, on the front page of a newspaper and call her a freak. Actually, that happened because she happens to be my sister and I changed political parties, which apparently justifies such treatment.

I do not like to refer to people's personal lives and I recognise that, since I have brought my sister in, people may like to bring all that up again. Why did I do it? I did it, first, because I wanted to put on record the courage and bravery with which she withstood media intrusion and, secondly, because I wanted to ask what the hell was going on. We think of ourselves as an advanced, civilised society, yet we pick an individual living in complete obscurity in a small rented flat in Cleveland and paste them on front pages of a few tabloids because they are connected with me, a politician. I think that that is a gross intrusion. A human rights commission would look at such cases. Although the press in this country is terrific and we need a free press — I do not argue against that — we sometimes get things wrong. I get things wrong and I am sure that even you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, occasionally get things wrong. However, there are moments when it is good to have an institution that pulls us up.

There are issues that such a commission would look into. The commission would be an important part of forward movement on the constitutional arrangements that the Government have considered, much to their credit. If we look back over the past 50 or 60 years, we see the recognition that one cannot change things just by laws; one must change things by culture, too.

In 1945, there was a seminal moment in the history of human rights around the western world and elsewhere. Getting to the point at which we are today has been a struggle. Both in creating a modern culture of human rights in which we decided to learn a great deal from the atrocities of Nazism and world war two, and in subscribing to the idea of a new legal order in which human rights might be universal and supreme over and above the respective national legal systems, we have made a real advance as a civilisation. It is no longer a defence to say, "I was only following orders", as the Nazis did, because we say that international norms within human rights are greater than the national legal issues relating to sovereignty in particular countries. That was a great moment. There are consequences for sovereignty in advancing a culture of human rights, which is a good thing.

In an advanced democracy, we need to recognise that some sovereignty may need to be subsumed to those international norms. The courts have been a guardian in such instances and are increasingly so. It is interesting that they are increasingly attacked for doing so. A human rights commission would pick up some of those issues but not all those tests and challenges need to take place in the courts and the judiciary. The human rights commission would be an element in advancing the culture, not only the legal framework.

In conclusion, I see little for us to fear in the rights of individuals being enhanced. The institution may be troublesome to the Government but it is a price that the Government and all of us in this great country should be prepared to pay.