Scotland and N Ireland could reject bill of rights

Proposals to change the Human Rights Act could become a ‘legal and political nightmare,’ experts have said

Plans for a British bill of rights supported by both Labour and the Conservatives could be vetoed by Scotland and Northern Ireland, a report warns.

The proposals to change the Human Rights Act could become a “legal and political nightmare,” experts have said, with England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all left with different levels of human rights protection.

“The devolution statutes and the Human Rights Act are legally and constitutionally tied together,” said Qudsi Rasheed, legal officer at Justice, which released the report. “Constitutionally, for there to be a change to the act, the consent of the devolved bodies would be needed.”

All the political parties in Westminster have discussed changes to the Human Rights Act. Last year, the government published a green paper on rights and responsibilities, which would add to the Human Rights Act, while the Conservatives insist they would repeal the act altogether.

But the Justice report argues that plans to change the act have been poorly thought through and could be unlawful.

“For Northern Ireland, the Human Rights Act formed part of the Good Friday agreement,” said Fiona Murphy of the Committee on the Administration of Justice. “Not only would creating a ‘British’ bill of rights be unacceptable to people in Northern Ireland, it would undermine an international peace agreement.

“If people don’t identify themselves as British, a UK bill of rights is not going to be helpful. In fact it could seriously destabilise. There is a huge backlash against a bill of rights in Scotland. Multiply that by 100, and you are getting close to what the difficulties in Northern Ireland are going to be.”

Support for a bill of rights in Northern Ireland has been strong since the end of the conflict, with estimates that 83% of both loyalist and republican communities support strengthening protection for human rights.

On Friday, Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government agreed to transfer policing and justice powers to Stormont creating further areas of devolved competence which would be affected by any changes to the Human Rights Act, according to the report.

In Scotland, criminal justice is already the responsibility of the Scottish parliament, where cases have been brought under the Scotland Act, not the Human Rights Act. “All major claims against the Scottish government for human rights violations have been brought on the basis of the Scotland Act since before the Human Rights Act came into force,” said Aidan O’Neill QC, a Scottish barrister. “Abolishing the act in Britain would not stop it being used in Scotland.”

Experts say the incorporation of human rights into the devolution statutes means attempts to repeal the law in Westminster could leave different parts of the UK with different human rights protection.

“Disentangling the rights from the devolution states would be a very difficult thing to do,” said John Wadham, legal director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. “You would have bizarre situation where there was different set of rights in devolved matters and non-devolved matters, and people in England would have fewer rights than people in the devolved jurisdictions.”

Attitudes towards human rights vary widely across the UK. Although there has also been discontent towards the human rights act in Scotland, Scottish ministers have voiced their support.

“We have the Human Rights Act and ECHR incorporated into our founding principles … We are happy with that,” said SNP justice minister Kenny MacAskill, giving evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

“Are we British? No, we are not. We consider ourselves Scottish and we consider those south of the border to be English. That is perfectly legitimate.”

“The problem with talking about a British bill of rights is that it assumes there is a common notion of what it is to be British,” said O’Neill. “When that gets analysed, the rights referred to are often said to go back to the Magna Carta, or the bill of rights. Both of those are purely English phenomena, from the period before Britain was created formally in 1707.”

“Trial by jury for example is not seen as a fundamental right in Scotland, it is seen as purely a matter for a prosecutor, and is only available for the most serious offences,” O’Neill added. “It’s opening a whole can of worms reassessing what the United Kingdom is.”

Both Labour and the Conservatives denied they had failed to take the devolved legislatures into account. Labour plans to keep the Human Rights Act, with added “responsibilities”, would not affect the substance of the act and would only require superficial changes to the devolution statutes, a spokesperson said.

The Conservatives said that they would not impose changes on the devolved areas without consulting them: “We have made it abundantly clear that we would not be wishing to impose something in Scotland against their will,” said the shadow justice minister, Dominic Grieve.

“In Northern Ireland we continue to have primary legislative responsibility. The Good Friday agreement says that Britain undertook to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into our law, and if we do our bill of rights properly, there is nothing that would break that undertaking,” Grieve added.

The Ministry of Justice said the devolved legislatures would be consulted on the bill.

“Our green paper makes it clear that this is an important UK-wide discussion,” a spokesman said. “It is of course essential to work with the devolved legislatures and administrations to consider how a UK bill of rights could be drawn up in way that is consistent with our governance arrangements. It is by no means a certainty that any future bill would require amendment to the devolution acts … We have and are continuing to consult as widely as possible – our consultation remains open to everyone across the UK until 26 February.”

The PCS union is predictably complaining about the job losses and calling on MPs, MSPs and Glasgow councillors to fight the job cuts.

There should never have been any Student Loan Company jobs in Glasgow in the first place because it is primarily an English-only quango.  Student loans are given to people studying at university in England to pay for the tuition and top-up fees they have to pay thanks to the votes of Scottish Labour MPs who out-voted the English MPs that voted against them.

Quite why the British government thought it was acceptable to follow the national insult of having top-up fees imposed on us by MPs elected in Scotland with the indignity of having the loans to pay them administered in Scotland and Wales where they receive grants to pay for their university education is a mystery.

The Scots and Welsh have profited from the English for long enough.  The Student Loan Company should close its offices in Glasgow and Colwyn Bay and transfer all the jobs involved in administering the student loan tax back to England where they belong.

The MP for Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath made it his mission to devolve police and justice to the Northern Irish government even though they didn’t want it and failure to come to an agreement would likely bring down the executive.

Britishness Brown was joined by the Irish Prime Minister to save the day, save the peace deal, save devolution and save his reputation.  The day wasn’t saved, nobody knows what’s going to happen with the peace deal, devolution is looking a bit iffy and he’s plumbing new depths with his reputation.

His dedication to insulating the celts from the British government’s disastrous policies on health, education, transport, environment, police, justice culture, sport, business, etc is admirable.  Sadly he doesn’t extend that same dedication or courtesy to the English, instead he puts an equal amount of effort into keeping England as the personal fiefdom of the British Prime Minister and the English people disenfranchised.

Britishness Brown has returned to his fiefdom leaving the Northern Irish government divided and apparently 48 hours from collapsing.  Of course, the simplest solution is to take the decision out of the hands of the politicians and put the question to a referendum but then they might come up with the “wrong” answer.

Living in rural Britain?

BBC3 is in the early stages of researching a programme about younger people living in rural areas. We are very keen to hear from teenagers and people in their early 20s living in rural communities who feel that they have been affected by the recession.

According to the Commission for Rural Communities there were 9.8 million people living in rural areas of Britain in 2008.

Really?  Let’s just check what the British Commission for English Rural Communities’ website says shall we?

9.8 million people lived in rural England in 2008

I thought Winston Smith was a fictional character, I didn’t realise he was a writer working for the BBC.

A complaint has been submitted to the BBC, naturally …

According to the Commission for Rural Communities there were 9.8 million people living in rural areas of Britain in 2008.”

No, the CRC does NOT say there were 9.8m people living in rural areas of Britain because the CRC is an English department of the British government.

What they actually say is: “9.8 million people lived in rural England in 2008″

http://www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk/events/10bignumbersnovember20091

The BBC employs tens of thousands of researchers and journalists, why do ordinary people like me have to continually correct you on such basic things as understanding the difference between England and Britain when it’s written down in front of you?

England does not mean Britain, it’s not that hard a concept to grasp is it?

Edit:
The article was changed as a result of my complaint at 2am!

Hi Stuart

Thank you for your complaint regarding the figures published by the Commission for Rural Communities for England.

It has now been changed and I’ll send a note to the person who wrote it.

Whilst interviewing the actor, Mark Rylance, about his new lefty liberal hand wringing play about Englishness, Marr interrupted to say “There’s cruelty in the play but there’s cruelty in Englishness too”.

The following a transcript of the relevant part of the interview:

Rylance: I think it’s about the question of what is indigenous Englishness. I think it’s clearer to look at the Welsh and the Irish and the Scottish and grasp … maybe you can’t put words to it but there’s certain kind of things that are very much part of their nation’s character and it’s harder perhaps because of our imperial past and the nature of the history of England to be pleased or proud about being English.  We used to have at the Globe a lot of difficulty trying to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday and St Georges Day without the National Front coming in you know?

Marr: Yeah

Rylance: And I remember Ken Livingstone and I think still Boris is trying to figure out how …

Marr: How you celebrate because part of this is very sort of dark and dysfunctional too isn’t it?  And I mean just thinking about that ghastly story from Doncaster this week, I mean there is a certain amount of wildness and madness and cruelty.  There’s cruelty in the play but there’s cruelty in Englishness too.  It’s not just an easy thing to celebrate.

Can you imagine the outcry if a BBC presenter had said there’s cruelty in Scottishness or Polishness or Chineseness?

Why on earth should we allow ourselves to be racially abused by a second-rate Scottish TV presenter for the British Broadcasting Corporation?  Well I for one won’t be – the following complaint has been made to the BBC regarding Andrew Marr’s racism and demanding a public apology.

On today’s Andrew Marr Show, Andrew Marr (a Scot) racially abused the English with the following comment:

“There’s cruelty in the play but there’s cruelty in Englishness too. It’s not just an easy thing to celebrate.”

Had any other nationality been described as cruel there would have been an instant apology on-air yet because it is the English he has made a racist comment about, no apology was made.

I demand an unreserved apology on-air from Andrew Marr on next week’s show for his racial slur.

The programme can be watched again on the BBC iPlayer here.  Fast forward to about 24 minutes.

Scottish Labour MPs no different to Non-Doms

THE double standards of this Government are legendry, but the latest outpouring by Sister Hattie Harman really does take the biscuit for downright cheek.

During questions on Non-Doms evading tax but being allowed to sit in the Commons and Lords, Hattie intoned: ”We are determined to make sure that we can’t have a situation where people purport to represent taxpayers in their constituency, or legislate in ways that affect taxpayers in the House of Lords, and yet not themselves be prepared to be registered as taxpayers domiciled in this country.”

What about the phalanx of Scottish Labour MPs whom the Government calls to vote on English affairs which do not concern their constituents?

Of course, that’s different. Bend the rules for Labour and screw eveyone else.

One Law for New Labour, and one for rest of us.

After 24 hours I still hadn’t had an email so I phoned them again.  The person I’d spoken to on Monday was on his lunch break so a message was left for him to call me.  A few hours later and still nothing – no email, no phone call.

So I asked the Conservatives and Eric Pickles, the Conservative Party Chairman, via Twitter.  Nothing.  So I asked again via Twitter and still heard nothing.  Then I had a brainwave – my Tory PPC, Tom Biggins, is bound to want some brownie points and he’s got to be in a better position to get information out of Conservative HQ than me so I phoned the contact number on his website which turned out to be the local Conservative Association.  They gave me his mobile number so I rang and left a message (it was switched off) which still hasn’t been returned over 24 hours later.

So I have today spoken to Stephen O’Brien’s office (the Shadow Health Minister) to ask for an explanation of the English health manifesto that doesn’t contain the word England and I have left a message with Michael Gove’s office (the Shadow Education Minister) and will ask them the same question about their education manifesto.

Arthritis drug free in Scotland, but too expensive for south, says Nice

A powerful new arthritis drug is unlikely to be given to NHS patients in England and Wales because it is too expensive, but those living inScotland will be provided with it for free.

Tocilizumab, whch costs £9,000 per patient per year, has provisionally been ruled out on cost effective grounds by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the body which assesses treatments south of the border.

But the body’s Scottish equivalent is recommending that it be provided to those in Scotland, fuelling accusations of a postcode lottery in UK healthcare.

Marketed by Roche under the brandname RoActemra, the drug targets an inflammatory signalling molecule called interleukin-6 to reduce painful symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, an auto-immune disease which attacks the joints and affects up to 646,000 people in the UK. It has been found to improve remission rates sixfold when used in combination with the standard anti-inflammatory drug methotrexate (MTX) .

In draft guidance Nice has indicated it is too expensive to justify. Yet sufferers of rheumatoid arthritis who do not respond to other therapies already have access to the drug in most of continental Europe. And the new guidance in Scotland recommends tocilizumab in combination with MTX for moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis when other treatment options have run out.

“This is fantastic news for people in Scotland who suffer from this disabling, life-long disease. However, it also highlights the disparities in accessing treatment between Scotland and the rest of the UK,” said Professor John Isaacs, leading rheumatologist at the Institute of Cellular Medicine at the University of Newcastle.

Ailsa Bosworth, chief executive of the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, said: “The SMC’s decision provides people with rheumatoid arthritis in Scotland who face a life of pain and potential disability another chance of combating their disease. We strongly hope that Nice will revise its draft guidance to ensure that people with rheumatoid arthritis across the country are able to benefit from RoActemra.”

The word “Britain” is used 4 times in the document, “British” is used once and “England” is used once.  The word “English” is only used in the context of the subject, not the country.  The manifesto talks of “getting Britain back to work” and ending “British poverty” but it only applies to England.

Less than a fortnight ago we pointed out that the Conservatives’ draft manifesto on the English NHS mentions “Britain” and “the UK” once, “our country” twice and “this country” three times but no mention of England.  At least the education manifesto has dispensed with the ambiguity of “the country” and “this country”, it’s just a shame that it’s replaced it with the equally misleading “Britain” and “British”.

This is the party that intends to form the next British government, to exercise all those powers in England that are devolved in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland yet they can’t even produce a manifesto that tells voters who is an isn’t going to benefit (or otherwise) from their policies.  Will Boris Johnson’s latest transport policy talk about his plans for the “British” tube or those iconic “British” red routemaster buses?

It’s not that hard really is it?  The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies all have their own websites explaining what they do and the Conservatives have MSPs, AMs and now (thanks to their tie-up with the DUP) they have MLAs who can explain devolution to their colleagues in the British Conservative & Unionist Party who write their English manifesto.

But I suspect the problem is not one of a lack of understanding of devolution, more a desire to pretend that the West Lothian Question doesn’t exist when addressing English problems because David Cameron has no intention of answering it.  The British Conservatives, like the British Labour Party, are wholly opposed to devolution for England and actively pursue a policy of making sure that England remains disadvantaged and English people disenfranchised.

When I asked someone at CCHQ for an explanation of the British/English thing the best answer he could come up with was “perhaps it’s to make everyone feel British and inclusive”.  They didn’t really understand devolution though so I will excuse them that epic bout of ignorance.  I did make one or two suggestions as to the motive and have been a promised a “proper answer” from someone.  That was a couple of hours ago now and I still haven’t had it but when (if) it does arrive, I will post it separately.