Blog: Our Rights in Law
Earlier this summer, I was grateful to have been to able to attend the British Institute for Human Rights’ Policy Academy on the Human Rights Act.
I’ve came into contact with the Human Rights Act at various points over my time working in the rights sector but to tell the truth I’d been more focussed on the UNCRC Scotland Act and international conventions so haven’t given the HRA much deep study.
With that, I jumped at the chance to join the BIHR Academy. The Academy, supported by the Baring Foundation, was a 6 week course on the Human Rights Act, its scope, how it works in practice and how we could use it to support our work. I joined a cohort of brilliant policy people working in third sector organisations all across the UK who all wanted to know what the Human Rights Act could do for the communities we work with and support.
We learned in detail about the 16 core rights and 4 additional protocols in the Act. Crucially Article 1, rights belong to everyone and Article 14, we should all be treated equally in the application of our rights.
We learned that the Human Rights Act underpins all legislation in the UK so all laws must be interpreted as far as possible in a way that is compatible with the rights in the act. This means that new legislation cannot override or contradict our human rights.
We learned that public authorities have a legal duty to respect, protect and fulfil our human rights across all actions, decisions and policies.
The Human Rights Act hasn’t achieved everything that it set out to do, we don’t yet have a strong culture of respect for human rights and lawmakers continue to propose policy changes that leave people without their basic needs met. But it is frightening to imagine a country where we don’t have the foundational protection of the Human Rights Act. The Act paved the way for equal marriage; protection against modern slavery; and remains one of the key mechanisms for ensuring children with disabilities can access adequate education.
While it doesn’t stop all violations from happening, the Act is a key backstop that allows something to be done when things do go wrong.
This was all fresh in my mind when the Programme for Government was published earlier this week.
The Human Rights Act mainly covers our civil and political rights which concern things like the right to life, freedom of expression and right to private and family life. At an international level, we have a whole other category of rights called economic, social and cultural rights that concern things like the right to food, right to adequate housing and the right to health. As it stands, we only have some of our rights in law and a Scotland-wide conversation around bringing those other rights into Scots law has been happening for several years in the form of a Scottish Human Rights Bill. You can read more about it here.
While I welcome the re-commitment to a Scottish Human Rights Bill in the Scottish Government’s latest Programme for Government, the commitment falls short by only committing to introduce the Bill in Year 2 of the Parliament. To push legislating for our human rights possibly into 2028 or 2029 feels like a lack of recognition of the transformative potential of the Bill, especially when the pressures around the cost of living, child poverty and widening inequality continue to squeeze Scottish communities tighter each day.
A Scottish Human Rights Bill is not a new concept in any shape or form with an appearance in the Programme for Government back in 2021 and extensive consultation since then across public sector, civil society and the wider public. Incorporation of international human rights conventions isn’t simple, as we’ve seen with the complications around the UNCRC Act and devolved competencies, but domestic legal recognition of economic, social and cultural rights on at least a basic level is necessary to prevent further erosion of living standards and key protections for communities.
Time and time again, I come back to the phrase ‘human rights are not a ceiling to aspire to, they are the floor and foundation’. It is striking to look at the key issues in the Programme for Government and see what are fundamentally human rights issues, including social security, access to healthcare and climate justice while a pathway to legislating for those rights and more is only mentioned once in the entire programme.
Now more than ever, it’s time to put our rights in law.
