Report by Mr Alvaro Gil-Robles, Commissioner for Human Rights, on his visit to the United Kingdom 4th - 12th november 2004

GENERAL REMARKS

One of the ten founding members of the Council of Europe, the United Kingdom was the first country to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and has, consistently with the strong sense of individual liberty that characterises British society, shown a generally impressive commitment to the respect for human rights over the past decades. The adoption of the Human Rights Act in 1999, rendering the rights guaranteed by the Convention directly applicable in domestic law, has been an extremely positive development and has significantly marked the human rights landscape in the United Kingdom.

Convention rights are frequently and thoroughly raised in domestic courts. In Parliament, the Joint Committee on Human Rights has added an effective layer of legislative scrutiny, whilst the obligatory declaration of the compatibility of proposed legislation with the ECHR has served to raise the sensitivity of Government to its obligations in this area. This is reflected in turn in the detailed references to human rights in executive regulations and guidelines. Indeed, the formal anchoring of human rights in the machinery of government and the level of protection offered by the judiciary are impressive.

The United Kingdom has not been immune, however, to a tendency increasingly discernable across Europe to consider human rights as excessively restricting the effective administration of justice and the protection of the public interest. The Government itself has every right to be proud of its achievement in introducing the Human Rights Act and has proven itself to be acutely conscious of the contours of the obligations entailed. I was struck, however, by the frequency with which I heard calls for the need to rebalance rights protection, which, it was argued, had shifted too far in favour of the individual to the detriment of the community. Criminal justice, asylum and the prevention of terrorism have been particular targets of such rhetoric, and a series of measures have been introduced in respect of them which, often on the very limit of what the respect for human rights allows, occasionally overstep this mark.

Against a background, by no means limited to the United Kingdom, in which human rights are frequently construed as, at best, formal commitments and, at worst, cumbersome obstructions, it is perhaps worth emphasising that human rights are not a pick and mix assortment of luxury entitlements, but the very foundation of democratic societies. As such, their violation affects not just the individual concerned, but society as a whole; we exclude one person from their enjoyment at the risk of excluding all of us.

Source : Council of Europe

Version française : Rapport de M. Alvaro Gil-Robles, commissaire aux droits de l’homme, sur sa visite au Royaume-Uni du 4 au 12 novembre 2004

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