Promoting a human rights culture

Roger Smith calls on the government to advance the idea of a Human Rights Commission and argues that such a body would cut litigation

Most solicitors will have some notion of the importance of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Its incorporation into domestic law of the European Convention on Human Rights creates a privileged set of primary values for all public bodies.

There has been an enormous, though patchy, improvement in decision-making procedures by public authorities.

The judiciary has moved into the space that has been opened up for them.

Resisting the temptation to move too quickly, judges have, for example, been strong enough to tell secretaries of state to fund tribunals properly and to approve the deployment of defence arguments in a criminal case manifestly contrary to the intention of statute.

And there have been decisions for and against the legality of the government's anti-terrosrism legislation.

The judges have decided these matters on notions of fairness and in accordance with the values expressed in the convention.

The important element is that they grappled with the key question: are some provisions discriminatory in their impact, are some a disproportionate response to a threat to public safety?

This takes us to the fundamental point of a Human Rights Commission: to advance a human rights culture.

The government has done something remarkable.

It has reduced its scope for arbitrary action and encouraged rational debate of its policy ends.

This was bold, brave and real, with practical effects limiting government action to a proportionate response based on a clear principle that provides a framework for government policy from the conduct of external wars to internal criminal justice policy.

Alas, the government now seems almost to have lost its nerve.

Arguments for a commission were sidelined into an inquiry by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights.

David Blunkett's criminal justice white paper is almost silent on human rights.

Barbara Roche's consultation paper on a single equalities commission to replace the existing single subject bodies recognises the importance of human rights to equalities, but promises only that 'the government will continue to give consideration to these issues'.

The equalities and human rights agendas need to be combined into a comprehensive assault on inequality and oppression.

The government needs to ratify the outstanding protocol to the European Convention that provides for a free-standing right to equality.

This would expressly bind together the equalities and human rights perspectives.

Then, the government needs to decide what body is best suited to further its own, so recent, agenda for a human rights culture that goes beyond the narrow band of lawyers and judges.

There are arguments both for a unified Equality and Human Rights Commission and for different bodies covering each function.

The first would seem more logical, though perhaps cumbersome; the latter may raise demarcation issues but is the model followed in Northern Ireland and to be implemented in Scotland.

A Human Rights Commission does not have to be large.

Primarily, its job will be to cover training and promotion with some encouragement of key cases.

Only a central body can oversee the type of educational programme that is required in schools and elsewhere if the full consequences of the Act are to be realised.

It would be sad if the government did not see through one of its great successes.

A half-decent commission would reduce the incidence of litigation rather than increase it.

And all lawyers would surely support that.

Roger Smith is the director of the human rights campaigning group Justice