The government says it wants to take its proposed bill of rights and responsibilities to the country for debate. This administration has a less than exemplary record of listening to people who respond to its public consultations, but for the moment we must take ministers at their word.

Justice minister Michael Wills told the British Institute of Human Rights this week that he will rewrite his green paper on the bill so that it is ‘shorter and more user friendly’.

He also promised to take the debate to schools and to every area of the country, ‘not just to postcodes that include a Waitrose’. For, as he said, ‘these rights and responsibilities are fundamental, they belong to us all’.

So what is the fuss about? The green paper proposes bringing together, into a single bill, a UK citizen’s rights and the responsibilities that should go with them. The rights include economic and social rights, such as the right to free healthcare, the rights of crime victims and the right to equality. The responsibilities include the duty to vote, serve on juries, live within the country’s environmental limits and promote the well being of children. The bill, Wills said, is not intended to replace the Human Rights Act, but might ‘subsume it or preserve it as a separate act’.

It is powerful stuff and possibly a first step towards a written constitution. Here are some of the points Wills raised in his address to the institute – we hope they will provoke fierce debate across the land, even in towns that have to make to with a Tesco:

  • The Conservative party has said it will repeal the Human Rights Act. Are there rights and responsibilities so central to our way of life they should be entrenched in our constitution and not left to the whim of political parties?
  • The government is clear that human rights cannot be legally contingent on discharge of responsibilities – someone who has broken the law cannot be denied his or her rights, for example.
  • Does the Human Rights Act make it impossible to strike the right balance between liberty and security?
  • How far can the state arrogate to itself the right to act for the individual?
  • Many people consider the Human Rights Act a ‘villain’s charter’. Are they mistaken? And if so, how do we persuade them that it is good law?