UK is planning radical changes to the constitution in Human Rights while preaching HR to Sri Lanka

With a very large majority in parliament, Boris Johnson is planning radical changes to the UK constitution. His party claims that far reaching reforms are needed because of a “destabilising and potentially extremely damaging rift between politicians and the people” under the last parliament. The issue at the centre of this “damaging rift”, however, is whether the proposals for constitutional change are a democratic necessity or a cynical attempt by the Conservative government to bolster its power.

These are the most important changes the Conservative government is in the matters related to the Human Rights. The UK government was one of the co-sponsors the so-called human rights allegations against Sri Lanka in the UNHRC in Geneva in 2015 and passed a UNHRC Resolution no. 30/1 against Sri Lanka to gain cheap political advantages from pro-LTTE Tamil Diasporas’ votes in the UK elections.

The Conservatives backed government  have long talked of repealing the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a “British” bill of rights.

Their debates have centred around the belief that the UK needs to revisit the balance between individuals’ rights – such as freedom of expression – and the wider public interest. That doesn’t mean the Conservatives want to curtail all rights to free speech but that they want greater powers to manage cases in which people use a free speech argument to justify hate speech. The basis of their argument seems to be that if human rights are universal to all then we may have now gone too far – as they also apply to “bad people”.

However, such arguments are flawed. Human rights legislation already recognises that rights are not absolute, and can be proportionally limited as necessary in a democratic society. Instead these proposals seem to be more about giving the government increased arbitary power to deport individuals they deem to be a risk, such as terrorist suspects, rather than having to fight protracted human rights litigation in court.

What’s more, the Conservatives’ actual commitment to retaining the right free speech can be seen via their proposals to repeal section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act.. This is the law that was introduced following the Leveson Inquiry and phone-hacking scandals, which forced publishers not signed up to an approved regulator to pay all legal costs linked to libel claims, even if the claims were ultimately thrown out. The concern is that if publishers are carrying these financial risks, it restricts the freedom of the press and legitimate investigative journalism.

172 Viewers