Campaigners warn Bill of Rights ‘offers no guarantee’ to protect children
Joe Lepper
Thursday, June 23, 2022
Campaigners have slammed government plans to overhaul human rights legislation, fearing that children’s rights will be eroded.
The government has this week introduced its Bill of Rights into parliament, which will replace the Human Rights Act that incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into UK law.
But campaigners, including children’s commissioner for England Rachel De Souza, fear it will erode young people’s rights.
She has written to Justice Secretary Dominic Raab “to express my grave concerns about proposals to reform the Human Rights Act without a guarantee that children’s rights will not be eroded”.
She added on Twitter: “Any replacement needs thoughtful and thorough parliamentary scrutiny. It is absolutely vital that children’s rights protections are not eroded by new legislation."
MPs and more than 150 organisations, including Children England, have called on the government to ensure the planned bill is effectively scrutinised by parliament.
“What are they afraid of,” said Children England chief executive Kathy Evans.
“Our human rights matter to every one of us. They are mine and yours, equally, whoever you are. Taking them away is a license for abuse,” she said.
Katharine Sacks-Jones, chief executive of care charity Become, said that “such fundamental changes to our rights require proper and thorough scrutiny”.
Such fundamental changes to our rights require proper and thorough scrutiny. Proud to be a signatory to this letter. https://t.co/JnPjGIElWJ
— Katharine Sacks-Jones (@KatharineSJ) June 22, 2022
Article 39, which campaigns to protect children’s rights in secure settings, has described the Bill of Rights as “a naked and shameful power grab” and pledged to “fight with all our might for the rights of children and young people”.
#RightsRemovalBill
— Article 39 (@article_39) June 22, 2022
Imagine drafting legislation which states the deportation of a parent can be prevented by recourse to human rights only if the child would suffer manifest harm that is so extreme it cannot be mitigated to any significant extent, or is otherwise irreversible. pic.twitter.com/HuD09OGayK
Article 39 director Carolyn Willow added: “We should all be preparing to robustly resist this ideological Bill which attacks the first principle of human rights, that we all have equal worth as human beings.
“There is not a single extra protection for children proposed in this so-called Bill of Rights, and children have not been shielded from the most brutal elements around deportation and prisons.
“Ministers are set to be handed even more powers and new barriers are to be erected to make it even tougher for children, and their parents, to challenge human rights breaches.”
Elsewhere, Martha Spurrier, director of human rights charity Liberty said the Bill of Rights is “worse than I feared” and has detailed a raft of sections where human rights will be eroded.
We have the #RightsRemovalBill. It’s worse than I feared. Here are top lines from first read:
— Martha Spurrier (@marthaspurrier) June 22, 2022
S(1) repeals obligation on courts to read legislation in a way that is compatible with human rights & attempts to take away judicial role in deciding balance of rights pic.twitter.com/xlbYdtR8VQ
This includes removing free speech for people challenging deportation and taking away courts’ power to determine whether laws are compatible with human rights, said Spurrier.
“What’s clear is that this bill is a wholesale rights raid. More power for the state, fewer rights for the rest of us,” she added.
The government has defended the bill saying it will give freedom of speech “greater weight in law” and “prevent trivial legal claims wasting taxpayers’ money”. Ministers also say it will allow further legislation “to make it harder for foreign criminals to frustrate” the deportation process.
“The Bill of Rights will strengthen our UK tradition of freedom whilst injecting a healthy dose of common sense into the system,” said Raab.
“These reforms will reinforce freedom of speech, enable us to deport more foreign offenders and better protect the public from dangerous criminals.”
In April, a coalition of campaigners, led by the Children's Rights Alliance for England, urged the government to shelve its Bill of Rights plans.
Among concerns is that children may not be able to hold the government and public bodies to account where their rights had been infringed.