A UK bill of rights and freedoms should not enable the courts to help individuals ‘jump the queue’ when pursuing proposed new ‘rights such as healthcare and education, the chairman of the joint committee on human rights has told the Gazette.

Speaking after last week’s publication of the committee’s report, which called on the ­government to adopt a UK bill of rights and ­freedoms, incorporating ‘aspirational’ socio-economic rights, Andrew Dismore (right), Labour MP for Hendon, maintained: ‘The role of the courts must be light-touch. Politicians allocate the resources. The courts are not there to allocate resources or spend – that’s our job.’

Dismore said the committee had examined domestic human rights law in South Africa – among other jurisdictions – in relation to socio-economic rights where the courts can rule on generalised rights, but not overturn legislation.

He singled out two examples where the South African courts had interpreted human rights in a healthcare environment: one involved access to anti-retroviral drugs for a HIV-sufferer, and the other a person seeking dialysis for a terminal kidney condition above other cases. The courts ruled that the HIV-sufferer’s right to healthcare had been undermined but rejected the dialysis case.

‘It is not the courts’ job to help people jump the queue,’ said Dismore. ‘The courts are a public body with an obligation to give effect to a [future] bill of rights as developed under the common law… it would be similar to the way the courts developed the right to privacy, which is effectively a new tort.’

The joint committee has ­recommended the bill should include broad rights to housing, health, education and an ­adequate standard of living, alongside ‘traditional’ UK rights such as the right to trial by jury and the right not to be subjected to intrusive surveillance without adequate justification or procedural safeguards.

Dismore said the bill should be ‘Human Rights Act plus’ and not merely an aggregation – or, worse, watering down – of existing European and UK legislation.