The coupling of the right-wing Conservative Party with the centre-left Liberal Democrats after last year’s UK general election was always going to be fraught. Already the Coalition government has been strained by the increase in tuition fees in the higher education sector, which many Lib-Dems opposed. Now a new potential schism looms in the guise of the UK’s Human Rights Act.
The Tories have never liked the idea of human rights because they equate it with Muslims, asylum seekers, individuals who commit offences and various other groups whom their supporters view as the natural enemy. The Human Rights Act was introduced in the early days of the Blair government and it gives the courts a chance to keep a strong check on the executive. The courts have ruled in favour of a better deal for asylum seekers and terror suspects in recent year. And the UK is signed up to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, which sits in Strasbourg. During the 2010 election campaign Conservative Party Leader David Cameron promised to repeal the Human Rights Act and to look at exiting the UK from the clutches of the European Court.
In order to entice the Lib-Dems into a coalition government, Cameron ditched this hard-line stance, but this week he has put it back on the table. Cameron has seized on two rulings to argue the need for reform. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has ruled prisoners should have the right to vote, and the UK Supreme Court says s-x offenders can challenge being put on a s-x-offender register for life.
S-x offenders and prisoners, two groups of people for whom there is little sympathy in voter land, have provided Cameron with the chance, which he announced in the House of Commons on Wednesday this week, to move to undermine human rights protections. He railed against courts making decisions that seem “to fly completely in the face of common sense. It is time to assert that it is Parliament that makes our laws, not the courts,” Cameron said.
Cameron has announced the establishment of a commission to “look at a British bill of rights” and Cameron made it clear such a Bill will not be enforceable in the courts because “it’s about time we started making sure decisions are made in this Parliament rather than in the courts.”
For Lib-Dems Leader Nick Clegg and his team this n-ked attempt by Cameron to reduce the courts to being rubber stamps of the parliament is highly problematic and surely must be a potential threat to the Coalition.
For the past two decades it has been the Lib-Dems that have been the lone voice in the UK in opposing assaults on human rights in areas such as anti-terrorism laws, criminal justice, welfare and migration. As a party it has long differentiated itself from Labour and the Tories on the need for a strong human rights law. In April last year a senior Lib-Dem told The Guardian that his party is in “favour of the Human Rights Act as it stands. We want to see its scope extended and, eventually, its entrenchment in a written constitution. We are not prepared to give a single inch to those who want to undermine it.”
If the Lib-Dems fail to stop the Tories dismantling human rights protractions, then its supporters might decide to abandon the party at the ballot box.
The ‘human rights’ of criminals is one that has always interested me. It seems it is now against the human rights of s–ex offenders to have them on a register for life.
It floors me -floors me – that those who abuse and disregard the human rights of others have their own human rights held in higher regard than those of their victims and those of society as a whole.
Something, somewhere, is wrong.
If society believes sex offenders are that dangerous, it should have the courage to actually put them in gaol for life, rather than try to slip a life sentence in under the radar.
This is before even considering that the term “sex offender” – and by extension lists of same – has become so generic as to be useless. By what rationale do teenagers engaging in consexual sex belong on the same list as someone who kidnapped, raped and murdered a 9 year old ?
In what way do they have their rights held in higher regard ?
Dr, how is it stateside?
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the first point. I object to the notion that a s–ex offender has paid their dues to society and so should be allowed to resume normal life. It is, after all, what civilised nations do, we are told.
I object because sentencing is wrong. If society had the opportunity to get together and really say what sentencing for these types of offences should be, I imagine it would be less of the 5 years in jail and more along the lines of castration. Not my view of course, but the view of many. My view is if you cannot live in society then you should not live in society. Life behind bars. End of story. I don’t mind paying taxes for that.
But society has not been able to make these judgments. Judges make them – and they do so on outdated precedents and sentencing guidelines. Which takes me to the second point.
An offender who is jailed for 5 or 10 years and is returned to society has the system and civil liberties on their side. They must be allowed to resume normal life, must not be persecuted, must have their privacy respected etc. etc.
The child who was abused has no such right. The family of the child who was abducted, abused and m–urdered has no such right. Theirs is a life sentence.
I have no right to know that an offender is living next door – because the offender who has taken and abused the rights of others is protected, whereas my children are not.
That’s what I mean by ‘higher regard’.
And its totally where civil liberties fails civil society.
Perhaps we should be a little bit more discriminating about what a “sex crime” is before we go mutilating people or locking them up forever, hmm ?
For what kinds of sex crimes are (inappropriate) punishments of “5 years in jail” being regularly handed out ?
Yes. Just like every other person whose innocence must (now) be assumed. Until their release, their rights were curtailed. Now they are restored.
That’s a mighty expansive definition of “right” you have there.
No. He’s no more “protected” than anyone else is. You can’t look up his criminal record, he can’t look up yours.
Should sex offenders be able to find out if any of their neighbours have a habit of assaulting people on the sex offenders list ? Should we have a list of individuals “convicted of assaulting people they think are sex offenders” available for public viewing ?
That’s not a higher regard, that’s the same regard. A person who has been convicted, and paid whatever penance they were required to by law, has the same rights everyone else does. No more, no less.
This is the same for pretty much any other crime (and should be the same for all).
Civil liberties are there so wannabe lynch-mob organisers like yourselves don’t fuck up and castrate the wrong person, or someone who doesn’t even remotely deserve it gets shunned from society (or worse). Civil liberties may sometimes fail individuals (though far, far more often on the “wrongfully imprisoned” rather than “wrongfully released” benchmark), but they absolutely do not fail society. “Better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent man be imprisoned” isn’t just a soundbite, it’s the keystone of a fair and just legal system.
If you really want to protect your children from harm, keep a watchful eye on your friends and relatives. That’s where any abuse is most likely to come from. “Stranger danger” is largely a scare campaign drummed up by corrupt and irresponsible media outlets.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sarah_Payne
Firstly, f— you.
Don’t you ever reply to one of my posts again and expect me to respond, you complete and utter prat.