Human Rights

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I shall not repeat the many excellent points that were made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird), my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). Given the time constraints, I want to focus on two issues: the meaning of ““public authority””, and the Government’s commitment to ensuring that the public and the wider public sector have a better understanding of the Human Rights Act. The understanding of the meaning of ““public authority”” is vital in ensuring the effectiveness of the HRA. There are many different providers of services to the public. Charities and voluntary groups provide services largely through taxpayers’ money via grants and agreements. Private companies receive public money in return for the services that they provide. Charitable groups provide services largely through donations from the public. Other providers receive money from the public in the form of lottery funding. The list goes on. I argue that, wherever a service provider is funding a service thanks to money that can be traced back to members of the public who are not paying for a direct transaction themselves as consumers but paying a third party to provide services for others, those third parties should be considered as public authorities and should have to comply with the HRA. Charitable status in itself implies a public subsidy because of the tax concessions, so any body that has such status should also come under the HRA. If any such body complains that it cannot afford to comply with the HRA, it should seriously question whether it should be involved in the activities that it is undertaking. I am sure that the public giving donations or paying taxes do not want their money to prop up projects or regimes that do not respect users’ dignity and human rights. I am therefore concerned about the fear, expressed in the Department for Constitutional Affairs review, that widening the definition of ““public authority”” could drive private providers out of the market. For a start, such a view could lead to considerable inconsistencies in different parts of the country. There could be a very different situation in an area in which an authority continues to manage a service in-house, compared with one in which its management has been contracted out. It would give rise to the absurd situation whereby redress against a public authority and a private provider would have to be approached in different ways. Far more worryingly, such an approach would send out the message that the HRA is of no concern to private providers. The HRA is important not only for its legal implications, but for the culture that it creates. In other words, the Act is not simply about offering redress to those whose rights are infringed but, we hope, about creating a culture in which rights are respected and individuals do not have to turn to the law. It is therefore important to ensure that any provider that receives public money to offer a public service is included in the meaning of ““public authority””. We also need a positive promotion of what the HRA actually means. Let me draw a parallel. All but nine of the 785 MEPs are white, but five of those nine are British. While I am concerned about that very low figure for the whole of the EU, we can at least take pride in the fact that five of them are British—that we have made greater progress than many of our European partners in the representation of ethnic minorities in public life. That does not happen by accident. EU officials in Brussels may say that there is nothing legally to prevent members of ethnic minorities from becoming MEPs, but we know from experience that it takes more than that. It requires recognising that the matter is an issue and that we need a positive action plan to take steps to ensure more comprehensive representation of all sectors of society. It is exactly the same with human rights. It takes more than the mere existence of the Human Rights Act to engender a real understanding of the principles and how they translate into the realities of everyday life. That is a much greater task and has to be tackled on several different levels. That is why I welcome the commitment in the DCA review to ensuring that the public, and the wider public sector, are better informed about the benefits that the Act can provide for ordinary people. We could start with education. Learning about human rights is an important part of citizenship education, but we need to ensure that it is delivered well. In some schools, citizenship education is tacked on to personal and social education and is often delivered by form teachers who have no preparation for it. While they may be enthusiastic and inspiring teachers in their own subject, they may have to deliver material with which they are scarcely familiar themselves. Indeed, if they are following a class of children from the age of 11 to 16, teachers may teach that lesson or module only once in five years. Citizenship education is far too important for that. Citizenship education should include helping young people to develop a meaningful understanding of human rights and it needs to be delivered by a team of specialist teachers who have the time to prepare the lessons thoroughly and deliver them to numerous classes, so that they develop an expertise in dealing with the issues that young people raise. Teachers should also be able to inspire and stimulate meaningful discussion. The same needs to happen throughout Government. We need concerted programmes across the whole of Government, throughout the public sector and for all of those who are acting in the capacity of the public sector, so that there is a proper understanding of what the Human Rights Act means in practice and of when it is relevant and when it is not relevant. Some sectors of society and the media have taken a perverse pleasure in making fun of what they call political correctness, ignoring the fundamental thinking behind the concept—ensuring that sectors of society that have frequently suffered discrimination and abuse are not subject to sexist, racist, homophobic or other disparaging comments—and they are doing the same thing with the concept of human rights. The term has been bandied about carelessly and cited as a factor when, as my hon. Friends illustrated, it was completely irrelevant. Such carelessness, or even downright ridiculing, is damaging. First, it fudges the whole issue of what human rights are, why they matter and how the legislation can provide valuable guidelines to what we in a civilised society may expect as a norm when it comes to respecting the dignity and rights of others. The issue is not just the threat of court action or actually going to court, but that the guidelines should be fundamental to our thinking.