The other day David Cameron was heard to be vexing lyrical and singing the praises of the Magna Carta as he celebrated the 800th. Year of its introduction The charter was introduced as a way of protecting the rights and freedoms of our society and made the king subject to the law. in the same way as his subjects were
Then centuries later in 1948 there came an important realisation that although fundamental rights should be respected as a matter of course, without some kind of formal protection human rights concepts are of little use
So in 1950 the European Convention on Human Rights was brought into effect Our present day Human Rights Act which contains a set of civil and political rights was enacted in 1998 It has always been considered fundamental to the sustainability of a liberal democracy The laws it brought in underpin British values of justice, tolerance and decency.
These are laws that have been carefully designed to place government and public authorities under a strict, non-negotiable obligation to treat people with fairness, equality and dignity. It is a matter of record that very frequently they have been all that has stood in the way of injustice.
In recent times here in the UK human rights legislation has blocked blanket interception of private messages by the state, protected our right to a fair trial and prevented indiscriminate police stop-and-search
There is a host of other benefits the Human Rights Act bestows on ordinary people It helps rape victims, aids domestic violence victims and guards against modern day slavery, a scourge that refuses to go away in the UK and elsewhere It has even protected those in care, shielded press freedom and provided answers for grieving families.
But now with a working majority in Parliament it would appear David Cameron cannot wait to scrub this piece of legislation which offers protection to the man in the street. The wave of public protest has forced the government to stay the axe But for how long ?
Take away the protections offered by the Human Rights Act is also politically naïve. It will remove at a stroke the moral authority Britain enjoys when we engage with other countries.
What sort of message would the we send to brutal dictators across the world if we abandoned our human rights’ obligations?
One cannot help feeling David Cameron cares little about the rights of the individual and is obsessed with taking power back into the hands of the state It is hard to say whether he is driven to do this through a pathological desire to control everything or simply a need to placate his back bench MPs.
Liberal Democrats in Government fought hard to stop the Tories trashing our human rights laws. No surprise then that the two people hoping to take over as the next leader of that Party agree that they must do everything they can to protect the legislation at all costs
