Un nouveau Bill of Rights

[Taranne]

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The time is right for a bill of rights

It is the mark of a civilised society that it progressively extends the definition of its people's rights – and enshrines them in law

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* Andrew Dismore

When personal finances are being squeezed by rising prices and economic fears, debates about bills of rights could seem irrelevant. But it is at such times that the lack of agreed values is most felt. As the experience of other countries shows, a national bill of rights, articulating fundamental rights and freedoms, can be a powerful statement of that society's aspirations.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) today publishes its report, A Bill of Rights for the UK? In it, we conclude that the UK needs a modern bill of rights and freedoms, to capture the best of our traditions and reflect our aspirations for the future.

The purpose of the classic bills of rights – Magna Carta in 1215, France's Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789, and the American Bill of Rights of 1791 – was to protect the individual's liberty against the intrusive power of the overbearing state. Liberty was conceived in the negative: an absence of restraint.

In the middle of the 20th century, however, conceptions of liberty and human rights began to change. President Roosevelt, whose interventionist New Deal rescued the US from the Great Depression, redefined freedom to include not merely absence of restraint but absence of want and fear. Liberty now included the right to economic security. (Aucune mention du Bill of Rights anglais de 1689 - étrange…)

In our modern parliamentary democracy, a bill of rights should combine these two human rights traditions.

Of course, any modern bill of rights should include our traditional rights, such as trial by jury. It should protect against intrusive state surveillance without justification and safeguards. It should also include more recent concepts, like fair administrative decisions and equality.

However, it should also incorporate new economic and social rights such as health, housing, education and an adequate standard of living. The civil and political rights we already enjoy are pretty meaningless in the face of destitution, homelessness or appalling health. (Tiens, revoilà le couplet sur les libertés formelles - qui a dit que le Labour s'était démarxisé?) When constituents come to my advice surgeries, claiming their "human rights" are being infringed, their problems are usually about health, housing, education or benefits – not currently recognised as "human rights" at all! Whilst such expectations might be integral to our way of life, they lack the justified recognition of fundamental individual rights. As Justice Albie Sachs of the South African constitutional court told the JCHR, a country that does not include economic and social rights in its bill of rights is a country that has "given up on aspiration".

There is also a powerful case to include the right to a healthy and sustainable environment, and for specific recognition of particularly vulnerable groups such as children, disabled people, minorities, workers (including migrants) and crime victims.

A bill of rights enshrining these additional rights would be a real advancement on the Human Rights Act. Yet this need not compromise our tradition of parliamentary democracy. The Human Rights Act is a parliamentary model of human rights protection. Courts have an important role, but parliament has the final say.

Our new bill of rights could build on this unique relationship between the courts and legislature. It could provide, for example, that economic and social rights are not directly enforceable by individuals against the government, but make it the government's duty to achieve the progressive realisation of those rights, with a limited role for the courts to review the measures taken.

A bill of rights should be a statement of the rights and freedoms to which everyone in the UK is entitled, and not dependent on the fulfilment of certain responsibilities or duties. In this era of globalisation and corporate power, when the state increasingly relies upon the private and voluntary sector to discharge its functions, and people expect choice over their provider of state services, a modern bill of rights should apply to private entities performing public functions.

A UK bill of rights should protect the vulnerable against the powerful. As well as reining in intrusive state power, it should oblige the government to address sidelined issues such as older people's vulnerability in residential accommodation or the education of children in detention. Social housing residents, older people in residential accommodation, patients receiving NHS care, disabled people arranging services through direct payments – they could all then rely on their human rights, even if their provider is private.

It would empower people to protect their environment against the polluting effects of big business. And in uncertain economic times, it would ensure that government is reminded of its responsibility to protect our social and economic security.

A UK bill of rights can provide the glue that binds us together as a cohesive society, united by a formal restatement of the values underpinning our beliefs and way of life, which makes us both what we are as a nation and what we aspire to be. It can contain the set of rights and freedoms that guide our responses to the challenges we face, from global economic insecurity, to international terrorism, to climate change. It can release the potential of our traditions to transform our future, rather than root us in the past.

There is an unprecedented consensus in this country about the need for a modern bill of rights. It is an opportunity that should not be missed.