Human Rights

We have concentrated fairly largely on the human rights aspect of our debate on values, rights and responsibilities. I hope to touch on values and responsibilities in my contribution. However, I have a long-standing interest in, and concern about, human rights. I am a former secretary of an Amnesty International group that looked after the rights of prisoners of conscience, as they were called then—I do not know whether that is still the case. They were people from countries throughout the world who were imprisoned for no other reason than the beliefs than they held, rather than physical violence of any form. One of my concerns is the way in which aspects of human rights legislation are starting to be interpreted in a very secular way. We have recently seen examples of that in the House during our consideration of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 and the sexual orientation regulations. I am worried that we are subtly—perhaps even inadvertently—introducing a hierarchy of rights in which the secular trumps the religious on every occasion. I do not know whether that is intentional, or whether the situation has crept in that direction over time. A few days ago, I received a petition from one of my constituents. Organised, I believe, by Premier Christian Radio, it is entitled, ““Declaration to Protect Christian Values””. I shall read it out—it is very brief. It states:"““As a citizen of the British Commonwealth, I am requesting by my signature below that you as a Member of Parliament give the rights of Christians equal value when drafting or voting on legislation. Whilst I understand and embrace the need to uphold the rights of other groups and beliefs,””—" quite right—"““the rights of Christians should not be compromised or subordinated to placate those views. Thank you for upholding the rights of all citizens, including Christians.””" That expresses some of the concern. Perhaps other hon. Members’ constituents have sent similar petitions to them. The sexual orientation regulations arose from a European directive—I am not saying anything against Brussels; that just happens to be the case. The directive, 2000/78, calls for a framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation and outlaws discrimination based on religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation. I am sure that all of us here agree with that. The directive also stated that the EU"““respects and does not prejudice the status under national law of churches and religious associations””." What is interesting is that the EU left member states free to make specific provisions for religion, but the UK Government chose to redefine employment and occupation to include the work of adoption agencies, which is worrying, because that has not been done in other EU countries. At present, unmarried couples and homosexual couples may seek the services of almost any adoption agency in the land other than the Catholic agencies. The Government are shortly to introduce legislation under which the Catholic agencies will not be able to operate, because they operate on the principle, which is true to their conscience, of saying that they wish to place children only with married couples. What worries me is that we have breached a conscience provision already established in law. We allow doctors, on grounds of conscience, not to perform abortions. We give women a legal right to have an abortion if they so choose, but we do not given them a specific legal right to go to a particular doctor regardless of whether that doctor wants to perform an abortion. It seems that, shortly, there will be a fundamental inconsistency in that area of law, and I wonder whether it is a just a matter of time before the Government get rid of that conscience provision covering doctors.