Tories keen to avoid 'power grab' row over human rights
The UK Government wants to reform the Human Rights Act without provoking a row with Holyrood.
Image by UK Supreme Court
Among the many comforting myths liberal Scotland tells itself is that we are more enlightened than England when it comes to human rights.
While the protections afforded by the Human Rights Act (1998) are seldom far from front pages and parliamentary debates south of the border, Scotland is a progressive, European nation that is above such things.
As with so much Scottish exceptionalism, this notion owes more to self-congratulation and wishful thinking than the facts on the ground. I recall the ripple of horror that greeted a 2015 poll, commissioned by a leading pro-independence website, which showed that 55 per cent of Scots supported the reintroduction of the death penalty compared to 49 per cent in the rest of the UK. (On each side of the Tweed, the demographics most strongly in favour of bringing back the rope were SNP and Ukip voters.)
One of the reasons for the low visibility of human rights as a matter of controversy in Scotland is that we have our own punters-versus-elites culture war: independence. Swap the Human Rights Act for the Scotland Act and Strasbourg for Westminster and it’s not difficult to see the same drama playing out with a local cast.
All of this makes Dominic Raab’s plans to reform the Human Rights Act an especially delicate matter in Scotland. The Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Justice, who will be visiting at the end of the week, has already launched a consultation into replacing the Act with what ministers call ‘a Modern Bill of Rights’.
The consultation document is all terribly benign-sounding, characterising the government’s objectives as an attempt at ‘respecting our common law traditions and strengthening the role of the UK Supreme Court’ and ‘restoring a sharper focus on protecting fundamental rights’. In practice, though, the reforms are controversial, with critics accusing Raab of undermining human rights in the service of Tory ideology.
Where the truth lies depends largely on your own take on these matters. UK ministers are eager to reassert parliamentary sovereignty in setting the parameters for how the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights are interpreted and put into practice in Britain. Of particular concern is how foreign-born criminals have been able to exploit, as ministers see it, the European Convention on Human Rights to avoid deportation. Article Eight of the Convention guarantees the right to respect for private and family life and has be appealed to by some serious offenders to prevent the Home Office removing them from the UK.
The government wants to tighten up how the Article Eight right is applied by ‘restricting the rights available to those subject to deportation orders’ or ‘limiting the grounds on which a deportation decision can be overturned’. This would include adding a ‘permission stage’ to prevent what ministers allege are ‘frivolous claims’ and by seeing to it that the UK Supreme Court interprets Convention rights ‘in a UK context’. There would also be a beefing up of freedom of expression, an area where the Convention has come in for criticism for a lack of robustness.
As the foregoing confirms, nothing involving lawyers is overly-burdened by brevity. Put simply, though, the UK Government is determined to force the Convention's square peg into the round hole of British political and legal preferences. The primary backlash will come from those who say Raab's ambition is for diluted Article Eight rights and less scope for the courts to give full meaning to their protections. Opponents consider the government to be driven by headline-chasing populism and a post-Brexit quest to ‘take back control’ from another European institution.
Although the Strasbourg court is a creature of the Council of Europe, not the EU, Brexit will also play a sizeable part in the opposition the Deputy Prime Minister can hope to encounter in Scotland. The SNP and others are likely to cast Human Rights Act reform as another way in which Scotland is being ‘ripped out of Europe’ by a Tory government most Scots didn't vote for. Expect the recent constitutional clash between the UK and Scottish governments over incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law to come up.
Whatever the wisdom of reforming the Human Rights Act, the political considerations behind the scenes are noteworthy. I understand UK ministers are expected to underline two points in forthcoming discussions with Scottish ministers. First, the centrality of human rights, with the reforms to be cast as a bedding down of human rights as a native part of the British justice system. Second, the UK Government's commitment to the Convention, with an emphasis that moving to a Bill of Rights is not about withdrawing from the Convention. That, I’m led to believe, will be a position forcefully underlined.
I'm also given to understand that ministers are cognisant of the importance of reforms being seen to respect the devolution settlement. Scottish ministers can probably expect to sit down with Westminster counterparts who will make all the right noises about genuine consultation and valuing whatever input Holyrood ministers have to offer.
What this tells me is that Whitehall is slowly learning how the SNP operates, what lines of attack it will deploy and how to comport itself in such a way as to make that more difficult. For all their reforms will meet with firm philosophical objections from political opponents in Scotland as elsewhere in the country, ministers are wise to what will help and hurt their cause north of the border. There are numerous examples of Secretaries of State arriving in Scotland and promptly putting their foot in it. No one will wish to repeat these.
It's a small thing but important nonetheless for the signals it sends both to the Scottish Government and the general public. It says UK ministers are learning how to play the devolution game. The Nationalists will always cry ‘power grab’ and so heading off such charges has to be part of any Westminster strategy.
Depending on how carefully the Deputy Prime Minister plays this, he might manage to defuse a political and constitutional incendiary by being insistently reasonable, open-minded and cooperative.
In the end, the SNP no more wants to have a brawl over human rights than Dominic Raab does, especially not when the UK Government's national messaging will be about strengthening the rules to protect the public from terrorists and other dangerous criminals. Scots are no less concerned about such threats and if Raab can keep the focus here, he may manage to deny the SNP the clamorous constitutional row they would much prefer.
On paper, the redesign of Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street seems reasonable enough.
Adapting the busy retail thoroughfare to add more space for pedestrians and cyclists not only reflects changing travel habits in a modern city, it should also help Dear Green Place do its bit against climate change.
The story of Audrey Ward offers another perspective, one that likely never occurred to many of us. Audrey is blind and has to use a cane to get about. She is ordinarily ‘an independent traveller’, yet the dips separating Sauchiehall Street’s cycle- and footpaths are much shallower than conventional kerbs, meaning she can’t detect them with her cane.
Audrey tells the BBC this has made walking one of Glasgow’s most heavily-travelled streets an ‘absolutely terrifying’ ordeal. The city council will set up a forum to give disabled people a voice on these matters in future. That's a welcome move but it should have happened beforehand, not afterwards. The needs of blind people should not be seen only in hindsight.
Figures published in a Sunday newspaper reveal there are now 176 spin doctors working for the Scottish Government.
That’s an increase of more than 50 per cent in the last four years.
To put it context, there are now 6.5 press officers for every one government minister.
And to think their opponents say the SNP is no good at creating jobs.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on February 21, 2022.
Again a great piece. Informative and reassuring that hopefully WM has cottoned on to the dark workings of the SNP. they are lucky to be able to employ over 6 PR workers per Minister. Why are they so short of money for necessary services for the people.
I hope you get the opportunity Stephen to root out this disgusting underage sexual activity the SNP are looking to make legal. This is not a natural way of safeguarding our children, even in a safe environment. They’ve been planning it for a while introducing more in depth sexual questions in a back door way via school children. I know I have diverged but something needs to be done. There’s not much about it in print or knews but hopefully it will be exposed for the mental, physical and emotional damage it will do to children.