One good thing Truss did in her brief tenure as Prime Minister was to shelve plans to ‘reform’ the UK’s system of human rights.

Under Sunak and Raab, the government is bringing back its much-criticised Bill of Rights.

As the Law Society (a group traditionally at least small-C conservative in its disposition) remarked:

“We are aware of media reports that the Bill of Rights Bill will return in its original form to the House of Commons. We are highly concerned by this and strongly encourage the government to rethink the Bill to not unduly diminish human rights protections in UK law or impede British citizens’ ability to access justice in our domestic courts.”

Are they right to be concerned about the Bill, or are they over-reacting?

They are not over-reacting. If anything, they are under-reacting: the threat to rights in the UK goes well beyond the Bill of Rights Bill and could undermine both the concept and the reality of UK citizens having human rights as they are understood around the world:

• A human right is something your government will protect for you;
• Most countries share an understanding of Human Rights;
• Market Fundamentalists like the current UK cabinet do not share that view and reject the idea of almost all rights.

A Human Right is Something Your Government Will Protect For You

UNICEF defines human rights this way:

“Human rights are standards that recognize and protect the dignity of all human beings. Human rights govern how individual human beings live in society and with each other, as well as their relationship with the State and the obligations that the State has towards them.

Human rights law obliges governments to do some things and prevents them from doing others. Individuals also have responsibilities: in using their human rights, they must respect the rights of others. No government, group or individual person has the right to do anything that violates another’s rights.”

In the UK, our rights are (at the moment) protected in law by the Human Rights Act 1988. This means that the government has an obligation to, for example, protect your life if it is in danger or, more commonly, to provide effective education to UK citizens.

The government does not, of course, have an obligation to meet every desire of its citizens: we do not have a human right to drive a Rolls-Royce.

Most Countries Share an Understanding of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights was:

“…drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It set out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected…”

What are these universal rights? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights consists of 30 articles covering a range of fundamental rights such as:

• Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
• Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.
• Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law…
• Article 17: Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
• Article 21: Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
• Article 23: Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
• Article 25: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
• Article 26: Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

These rights have been further developed and enshrined in law around the world at the regional and national level:

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights formed the basis for the European Convention on Human Rights, adopted in 1950. British lawyers played a key role in drafting the European Convention on Human Rights, with Winston Churchill heavily involved. It protects the human rights of people in countries that belong to the Council of Europe, including the UK.

The [UK] Human Rights Act 1998 made the rights set out by the European Convention on Human Rights part of our domestic law. The Human Rights Act means that courts in the United Kingdom can hear human rights cases. Before it was passed, people had to take their complaints to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.”

In principle, if not always in practice, UK governments have until now shared that accepted understanding of human rights and sought to ensure that UK citizens enjoy them.

Market Fundamentalists Do Not Share That Understanding

In the UK, as stated above, our Human Rights are enshrined in the 1998 Human Rights Act. The cabinet minister responsible for such matters (and for introducing and now reintroducing the Bill of Rights Bill to replace that Act) is Dominic Raab, who famously commented:

“My name is Dominic Raab; I am the author of The Assault on Liberty; and I am a Tory. I don’t support the Human Rights Act and I don’t believe in economic and social rights.”

Like most members of the Cabinet, Raab is a market fundamentalist. A market fundamentalist is one who believes, as an absolute and unqualified truth that “markets are the best way to allocate resources.” That does not simply mean that markets are the best way to allocate luxury goods, it means that markets without ‘government interference’ are the best way to allocate all resources. Food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare, etc, as well as money itself should all be allocated through unregulated markets.

All of these things should be like a Rolls-Royce: you do not have a right to them unless you can afford to pay for them. If you cannot afford to pay for them, that is not the government’s responsibility; that is your responsibility. As Sajid Javid told the Conservative Party conference in relation to funding of Health and Social Care:

“Government shouldn’t own all risks and responsibilities in life. We, as citizens, have to take some responsibility for our health too. We shouldn’t always go first to the state – what kind of society would that be? Health and Social Care: it begins at home. It should be family first; then the community; then the state.”

It is, of course, precisely because the family is the first port-of-call for funding of elderly care that we have a Care Crisis.

Healthcare is expensive. Private healthcare is more expensive. The reality of the US system is that it costs more than double what our system costs, produces worse healthcare outcomes (lives are shorter in the US) and is responsible for over two thirds of US personal bankruptcies:

“This is the list of what Laura Marston has sacrificed to keep herself alive: Her car, her furniture, her apartment, her retirement fund, her dog. At 36 years old, she has already sold all of her possessions twice to afford the insulin her body needs every day. One vial of the insulin Ms Marston uses now costs $275 (£210) without health insurance.”

One cannot live without food, clothing and – at times – healthcare. Without a right to food, clothing and healthcare, the right to life is meaningless.

So the damage is not just down to the Bill of Rights Bill – the Health and Care Act, which is now law, is already set to do immense damage to our rights.

And there are many other vital rights, including many of our democratic rights, which are also under threat from other pieces of government legislation. The Elections Act removes the independence of the Electoral Commission and curtails our right to vote in free and fair elections. And we no longer even have the right to peaceful protest.

Sunak is now planning to ‘deradicalise’ those who “vilify the country.”  If that includes people who point out how much worse the UK has become for a normal citizen, then many of us are at risk.

And, as the example of healthcare shows, losing our rights is not a theoretical issue that affects a few political activists: it is a practical issue that will change the lives of almost all UK citizens dramatically for the worse.

Which of our rights are at risk? Market fundamentalists believe that, of the eight rights highlighted above, only the right to property ownership should be protected by the government: all the others should be a question of individual responsibility.

The table below summarises their position.

Conclusion

We should certainly be extremely concerned about the Bill of Rights Bill, but we should see it not just as an individual and misconceived attempt to redraft UK human rights law but as part of a co-ordinated legislative programme which aims to remove the whole idea (and reality) of economic, social and political rights from UK society.

To make the UK a country fit for future generations to live in, we need to reverse these policies.

The government still has a large majority, but recent months have shown that it dare not ignore the UK population completely: the ousting of Johnson (slowly) and Truss (quickly) shows that even Prime Ministers cannot survive the combination of poor polls and mass letter-writing to MPs. The forced resignation of Gavin Williamson for bullying shows that ministers are even more disposable.

The sponsor of this dangerous Bill is Dominic Raab, who is also facing multiple allegations of serious bullying.

So, now is a very good time to pile on the pressure. These notes show how you can help: it need only take 5 minutes of your time. Simply make it clear to your MP that since such aggressive and unprofessional behaviour would not be tolerated in any normal workplace, it certainly cannot be tolerated in a senior minister of state.

If you think you might like to help or just to keep informed, please do sign-up and join the 99% Organisation.