This Exhibition is a great way to mark the anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A big thank you to the organisers, to Andrea, Jenny and the team here at County Hall Gallery, for bringing this exhibition to London.
And on this day we ratified the protocol against torture. We are one of the first countries to do so, and the first in the EU.
It's good to see the texts of the individual Articles of the UN Declaration alongside the images they inspired. And you've got the Articles up in nine languages as well as braille, and you can hear them as well. Above all we have the pictures. What they are telling us is that human rights is here. Human Rights is very much now.
Let's start with the UN Declaration.
It was the first of the great strokes on the post war international human rights canvass. It was inspirational. And it remains inspirational.
Nelson Mandela reminded us that the Declaration was adopted a few months after the evil Apartheid regime was first introduced into South Africa. He said this:
'The simple and noble words of the Universal Declaration were a sudden ray of hope at one of our darkest moments - it was proof that [we] were not alone, but part of a global movement against racism and colonialism, for human rights and peace and justice.'
The Universal Declaration wasn't enforceable. And it was drafted as a global instrument. It needed to be brought home. And made meaningful, and made real and made enforceable.
It was brought home for Europe in our regional settlement - the European Convention on Human Rights. The horrors of World War 2, the slaughter and dispossession of millions of innocent people - Jews, Gypsies, black people, homosexuals, disabled people, as well as political dissidents. All of that oppression showed why we needed a major statement of basic human rights - and why we needed to supervise compliance with it at the international and at the judicial level.
A lot of traditional British thinking about fundamental rights and liberties was exported into the European Convention. One of my predecessors as Lord Chancellor, David Maxwell-Fyffe, subsequently Lord Kilmuir, was a key member of the team who drafted the document.
We were the first country to ratify the Convention, 50 years ago. Not surprising, given our influence and leadership and our influence in the production of the draft legislation.
What became of that leadership? The UK withdrew into its shell and did nothing about it. It wasn't until 1966, under Harold Wilson, that the UK allowed its citizens to take cases to Strasbourg. And we didn't bother to incorporate the Convention into our domestic law. We said it wasn't necessary. It took half a century until we finally brought the Convention rights home. And that was the Human Rights Act 1998.
Could I briefly pay tribute to Gareth Williams, who died so suddenly so recently. He was a champion of the proposal that became the HRA. His careful and totally committed stewardship of the legislation is one reason for the welcome all-party agreement that happened at the end of the Parliamentary process.
Sadly all-party agreement didn't stop a lot of misguided attacks as soon as the Bill was on the statute books. They said that passing a law on human rights would damage Britain, and our way of life. The courts would collapse under the strain as everyone used the new law to overturn a thousand years of British history. Judges would rule. Parliament would be overruled. Lawyers would be in clover.
Like many dire predictions the truth turned out to look rather different. Britain has not been abolished. Our courts are not being run from Strasbourg. And the law is still the law. In the three years since the Act came into force there have been 10 declarations upheld that particular laws of ours don't measure up to human rights - and some of those declarations we have rightly encouraged. No one should be surprised. The human rights we had brought home weren't really new to us.
What was new was seeing our fundamental, essential rights on liberty, security, privacy, freedom of speech and others made clear, written down made accessible made enforceable in a meaningful way.
Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at Oxford, wrote the other day that, until the Human Rights Act, our rights were mere 'inductive generalisations' from individual decisions. Now, he says, they are 'deductively derived from higher law'.
I think that's right. And it's important. But what really interests me about human rights legislation is what practical difference any of this makes in ordinary people's lives. That's why we did it. That's what we wanted to see.
Too often human rights are written up as if they were not for people generally. For the few, not the many. They are not. They are for all of us. The Human Rights Act tackles issues which are mainstream, not marginal. How should our public services treat us? What do we do when one person's basic rights conflicts with another's? Who will stand up for our basic rights and freedoms if we are unpopular or don't have money or don't have power? Let's look at what's been going on as a result of Human Rights legislation.
Take, as a first example, how the Act can shine a light on built-in bureaucratic delays (R v Mental Health Review Tribunal (MHRT) ex parte C). Queuing is one thing. Keeping people waiting on principle is another. Is that what we want for anyone from our public services? This case was about people applying for a review of their detention as mental health patients. Mental illness happens. It isn't a crime. But all applications had to wait eight weeks minimum after the date of application. That was the rule. Eight weeks can be a very long time if you have been ill and are locked up - and want someone to hear your side of the story. The Court looked at this in the light of Article 5 in the Human Rights Act which is about the rights to liberty and to security. It dismissed the bureaucratic rule as, and I quote, 'bred of administrative convenience, not administrative necessity'. Of course rules are needed. But not rules like that.
Or think about how the Act can help people lost in bureaucratic voids (R (Bernard) v Enfield London Borough Council). The void in this case was between a Housing Department and a Social Services Department of the same council. We have all seen this kind of thing happen. It isn't what anyone wants, but people - especially the powerless and the vulnerable - can get forgotten in voids like that. In this case a severely disabled wheel chair bound woman had been housed by the council in, and I quote, 'deplorable' conditions - unable to access the toilet or keep herself clean. She had no personal privacy whatsoever. She could have been anyone's mother or grandmother. There but for the grace of God..... Twenty months after her Care Plan, the council had still failed to find a suitable alternative. She was lost in a void. The High Court looked at Article 8 of the Human Rights Act - the right to privacy and family life. Suitable housing was found. Compensation was paid. The Act made a difference by raising the profile of the poor treatment. It gave a legal name and legal power to the human harm involved.
Or, as my final example, a case involving what some see as the most cherished of all British liberties, saying 'no' to officialdom (R (Robertson) v Wakefield Metropolitan Council). Here, someone wanted his name and address off the electoral register. Why? It was being sold to direct mail companies. Why, he asked, should his ability to vote depend on his willingness to receive junk mail? The Council were applying the rules and the rules were quite clear. So he challenged the Council and he challenged the rules. And he won. The High Court said that selling the register to anyone with the money to pay for it, regardless of what they were going to do with the information, was over the top in human rights terms. It was a quite unjustified interference with basic rights. And that isn't allowed under the Human Rights Act. That case wouldn't have been possible and wouldn't have been contemplated here before the Human Rights Act was passed.
These human rights stories all involved court action. I could give you a lot more but I'm even more interested in the ones that didn't involve a court - where the Human Rights Act is making a difference to people's lives by inspiring good practice and a sharper focus on individual rights and responsibilities.
Let's start with my own Department.
If you have business at a magistrates' court these days - and around 13,000 people a day do - you can expect to be given proper reasons for the outcome in your case in your courts. That wasn't always true, and it's the Human Rights Act which has brought greater transparency and accountability into the process. There wasn't a case about this. We looked ourselves at the long-standing policy in the light of the Act and came to a new conclusion. It was a question not only of giving people a fair trial but also showing them what had happened to them and why.
Or look at local councils. The Act is making a difference without the courts as well as with them. Small example, drawn from everyday life. The owner of an ancient and beautiful walnut tree successfully persuaded his local council that it didn't need to cut off all the branches which overhung the council car park. Less easy than you might think. Because the Council had told him that it had the same rights as any neighbour and that it was entitled to adopt a radical approach. We are only informing you 'as a matter of courtesy' said the man with the chainsaw. The Council then realised that, under the Human Rights Act, the Council is a public authority. And that means not only that it must act compatibly with people's basic rights - in this case the right to the peaceful enjoyment of personal property. It must also act proportionately when it interferes with rights. One branch came off. Not the whole lot. Owner happy. Council happy. Common sense, brought home by the Human Rights Act.
Or take education. The national curriculum in England now includes compulsory citizenship education. It's another overdue reform brought in by this Government. But what are our basic values for citizenship - our version of a Bill of Rights, setting out the basic ethical values we can all share, regardless of religious, cultural or other differences?
Some now say we need look no further than the Human Rights Act. Happily, people like the Institute for Global Ethics and the Citizenship Foundation and some other organisations reached this conclusion a little earlier and are already using the Human Rights Act in this way all over the United Kingdom. And so they should.
The Human Rights Act is I believe a real break-through. The rights and freedoms in it are not new, but they are set down in clear and codified form and everyone can see what we stand for and why.
We have also been changing the way that Government works to bring rights home.
We brought in a rights check. All ministers introducing new Bills must declare in writing that the proposed Act is compatible with the human rights legislation, as enshrined in the Human Rights Act. If that cannot be said, then the Minister must set that out in writing instead what the position is - and it is for Parliament then to decide how to proceed.
We also have a new Committee of peers and Members of Parliament which is advising Parliament in detail about human rights implications. It is doing an excellent job. I saw them on Monday evening and they rightly grilled me on the whole range of my human rights responsibilities.
Quite rightly, the Joint Committee isn't only interested in technical compliance. It also presses Government on whether proposed legislation could do more to guarantee rights. Its not always the most comfortable experience for a Minister. It isn't supposed to be. Getting it right on human rights isn't a matter of precise science. It involves difficult judgement about what is necessary, what is proportionate, what is in balance with other rights and responsibilities - there is room for argument and debate. We need to be mature enough to listen to what others say and to engage in a dialogue with them. But in the end, the Government, having regard to its clear unswerving commitment, must make the proposal it believes is right.
The right in particular try to derail us, whenever and wherever they can, from pursuing the key agenda of human rights. I understand why they want to do this. But I profoundly disagree with them. And I say this to our opponents on the right: we will not be deflected from ensuring that the people of this country know what are their rights, how they can obtain them, and how they may enforce them. Never mind the right wing: we will do the right thing.
Let no one doubt this Government's continuing commitment to human rights and responsibilities. It is, and always has been, a commitment to a lot more than bare legal compliance with the ECHR. It's actually a commitment to building a culture of respect for rights - a culture which makes a real difference to how our public services treat us, and how we treat each other and we are treated by the state.
You saw our commitment in operation a month ago when Patricia Hewitt and I announced that we are creating a Commission for Equality and Human Rights. Not only are we drawing together the existing equality commissions and future strands, we are adding the promotion of human rights to the mix. Actually, we are putting human rights at the heart of the new politics of equality.
People shouldn't be surprised. Human rights provides the vital missing link between basic fairness for the many, and basic fairness for the few. It is that link that makes equality very plainly an issue for us all. Human rights has always shown why. Human rights is now going to show how.
My vision of the new body isn't a 'one-stop shop'. I don't want the new body to be just the sum of the existing parts, plus human rights thrown in for good measure. My vision is about getting a model 21st Century nation based on the equal worth of all. It's a positive vision of a multiracial, multicultural society with a shared understanding of what is right and wrong and about the duties we owe to each other and the state owes us. It's a positive vision for everyone based on the idea that, in the final human rights analysis, everyone can be in a minority - a minority of one.
In my vision the message from the new body is about the liberation of people, not just as workers, but as citizens with a share and a stake in society. People who are genuinely empowered, and genuinely responsible. So its power, not just to the people, but to each person to make the most of what is within them. And that is what bringing rights home is all about.
The new Commission is a huge step forward. But I want us to do more and to do it faster. More legislation. And more work to build the culture of respect for rights and responsibilities which is what the Human Rights Act was for.
So, building on the success of the 1998 Act, I am pressing ahead with our agenda on rights. The right to freedom of information will be fully enacted when the legislation comes into effect in a year's time. In the legislative programme for this year we already have new measures announced on civil partnerships, and on gender recognition. These new measures matter enormously and rightly to the people involved. But they are not large-scale changes. What they are, though, are wrongs which need to be righted. That's what we're going to do. So when I say we're not going to be deflected from this agenda, that's what I mean.
The new Commission will have a major role promoting human rights and good practice. But I do not agree that Government can simply sit back and await the new body. I have asked for a full review, led by my Department, of the current arrangements for mainstreaming human rights. All Departments need to look closely at the training and awareness programmes they have in place. They need to look at the way they address human rights with the public authorities for which they are responsible. And they need to look at the level and quality of their arrangements for monitoring and championing human rights.
I believe that this is a vital agenda. I believe it is an agenda to which the Government is and must be committed to. I know it's a challenging agenda. But it's the right agenda. We believe that human rights are a central component of our policies, set out in our manifestos and put into place in practice on the ground. Part of our programme to modernise the constitution yes, but modernisation for a purpose: to help build the fair and decent society we all want to live in.
Because for this Government, human rights, inseparably coupled with responsibilities, are the basic bedrocks of citizenship - how we all live with one another in a fair and decent society. That's the kind of objective a government committed to progressive values ought to have. It is the kind of objective this government does have. And it is an objective I am committed to securing.