All three major political parties have recently showcased their human rights and civil liberties credentials at the British Institute of Human Rights in London. First up was the Tory Nick Herbert MP, who explained the party’s plans to scrap the Human Rights Act (HRA) and replace it with a Bill of Rights along US lines.Next came Labour’s justice secretary Michael Wills, with his green paper on a bill of rights and responsibilities to complement the HRA. He wanted to take the debate to the country and said he would rewrite the green paper to make it more user-friendly.

Last week it was the turn of the Liberal Democrats, with home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne explaining his party’s support for the HRA and a new Freedom Bill.

Huhne talked about how the UK’s ‘climate of tolerance’ risked being eroded by the difficult economic climate, stressing that the HRA ‘needs support and nurturing’. He also warned about confusing citizens’ rights with human rights. Citizens’ rights, he said, are ‘contingent’ on the society in which you live and can vary from country to country. Human rights, on the other hand, are non-negotiable. They are a set of obligations owed to all humans by virtue of being human, such as the right to life and not being tortured,

The Lib Dem’s Freedom Bill, Huhne told us, aims to ‘roll back the authoritarian laws passed by both Labour and Conservative governments, which have systematically undermined many of our hard-won civil liberties’. These laws pertain to extradition, identity cards, whistle blowing, freedom of information, the DNA database, and the right to protest – among other things.

He promised a ‘regulatory framework’ for surveillance cameras because the UK had ‘sleepwalked’ into becoming the most filmed country in the world. It has half of all Europe’s cameras and one-quarter of the world’s.

Huhne closed with this call to arms: ‘Don’t mess with the HRA and don’t confuse citizens’ rights with human rights.’

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