ANTI-HUMAN-RIGHTS PLAN UNLIKELY TO GET SUPPORT

Posted by Jim on May 20, 2015

Brian Feeney. Irish News( Belfast). Wednesday, May 20, 2015.

The current Conservative government plans (never to be fulfilled) to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a so-called British Bill of Rights Act have proved very useful. They have prodded the Republic’s government into action.

In a strong address to the Seanad last Thursday Charlie Flanagan said: “The protection of human rights in Northern Ireland law, predicated on the European Convention of Human Rights, is one of the key principles underpinning the Good Friday Agreement.” He went on: “The protection of human rights in Northern Ireland law, predicated on the ECHR, is one of the key principles underpinning the agreement.”

He also reminded the British government, for his address was aimed at them and its more clueless members such as our proconsul[ Secretary of State, Theresa Villiers]: “Protecting the human rights aspects of the Good Friday Agreement is not only a shared responsibility between the two governments in terms of the welfare of the people of Northern Ireland, but is also an obligation on them as parties to the international treaty, lodged with the UN, in which the agreement was enshrined.”

The threat to international human rights posed by Cameron’s ranting right has acted as a stimulus to an Irish government which over the past four years has been notable for its detachment from The North. Its inherent hostility to Sinn Féin as a rival for votes in the Republic has meant that instead of promoting the interests of northern nationalists ministers have sought to act as ‘honest brokers’. That’s an absurd position when faced with a government more biased towards unionists than any since Lady Hacksaw’s[ Maggie Thatcher] time.

Our proconsul’s ill-informed response that scrapping the Human Rights Act would not affect the Good Friday Agreement is just plain wrong. Furthermore her remarks show that she does not understand the powers of the UK Supreme Court vis á vis the European Court.

Then again she is such an unthinking Cameron loyalist (or maybe just a loyalist?) that she probably automatically blurts out a defence of any Conservative proposal.

The best dissection of the woolly and unthought-out plan comes from Cameron’s former attorney-general Dominic Grieve QC. In an interview on Sky Grieve pointed out that the Human Rights Act is “embedded” in devolution in the Scotland Act, in Wales and The North “and in the case of Northern Ireland it is part of an international treaty with the Irish Republic so it’s difficult to see how any change to replace it with a Bill of Rights could be done against the wishes of any of those parties”.

Removing certain rights would, Grieve points out, leave the UK incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Membership of the EU requires adherence to the ECHR.

Others have pointed out that there could be the ridiculous and untenable position where, since Westminster isn’t about to undo devolution, people in Scotland, Wales and the north would have different rights from people in England.

Then there’s the delusion that scrapping the Human Rights Act would make it easier to boot unsavoury people out of Britain. No, because their own country might not take them but also the International Convention against Torture prevents sending people to countries where they might be tortured or killed.

Which makes you wonder how people can be extradited to the United States, but that’s another issue. The US, which happily beats and tortures people, obviously has no human rights act as you would gather, but still can’t get rid of dozens of men in Guantanamo because no-one will take them. So how’s that easier?

In the end Cameron and his acolyte Gove will be unable to get their legislation passed even with the anti-human rights DUP supporting him unquestioningly. Conservative MPs like Grieve will tear the proposals to shreds. Others such as David Davis have already said they will oppose it. Lord Bingham, former Lord Chief Justice and human rights expert, and others like him, will ridicule Gove’s plans in the Lords beginning with demolishing the idea that the UK Supreme Court is not supreme and that the European court is a ‘foreign court’ when a British judge sits on every UK case. The first question for our clueless proconsul is, what human right do you want to get rid of first?