Petition For A Human Rights Act Referendum Has Got 200,000 Signatures And Counting
200,000 People Haven't Forgotten What The Tories Are Planning To Do To The Human Rights Act
Louise Ridley— The Huffington Post UK
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The Conservative government has no right to scrap The Human Rights Act and the matter must be decided by the British population, according to hundreds of thousands of people who have signed a petition calling for a referendum on the issue.
It says that the Tories have no right to "carve up" the UK people's rights, as the party has a small majority in parliament, and most of the UK population is unaware of the "fundamental" change to their liberties that scrapping the Act would entail.
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The PM's plans to scrap the Act are delayed but not forgotten
It calls on Cameron to arrange a referendum to allow the people of the UK to decide whether to give Tories "permission" to remove the Act.
Petition organiser Marc Chudley demands a referendum to "provide national scrutiny and informed debate" on the Tory plans, which few people "are aware of and even less understand."
Removing the Act - which the Tories plan to replace with a 'British Bill of Rights' - would remove key rights from the UK, the petition claims.
To change the law in such a major way can only be legitimate if decided through a referendum, it adds.
The petition states:
The Government believes that a majority of 12 seats, a 37 % share of the vote and with just 25 % of the electorate voting for the Conservatives, that this some how gives them a mandate to remove these fundamental rights that protect us all.
We disagree. With such an important change to our rights and our freedoms, this should be a matter decided by the people in a national referendum.
The question should request us to give our permission to the government, to abolish the act and remove these rights; it should also provide us the opportunity to vote on any proposed alternative.
The petition was started in May, when it was thought that the Tories would do away with the Act in The Queen's speech.
In fact, the Government backed off introducing a new British 'Bill of Rights' in this year's Speech, amid fears of backbench rebellion. A government source said that it would be “odd if we did not consult widely”.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson told The Huffington Post UK: "This Government was elected with a mandate to reform and modernise the UK human rights framework. The UK has a proud tradition of respect for human rights which long pre-dates the Human Rights Act 1998. But the Human Rights Act opened the system to abuse, damaging the credibility of human rights.
"That's why we will bring forward proposals for a British Bill of Rights. Our Bill will protect fundamental human rights, but also prevent their abuse and restore some common sense to the system. We will widely consult on our proposals before introducing legislation."
These Are The People Human Rights Law Really Helps
Families Of Missing People (01 of07)
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The "right to family life" has become the villain of the HRA for how it complicates deporting those born abroad when convicted of crimes here. But this part of became crucial in the ongoing hunt for Ben Needham, who disappeared in 1991 when he was just 21 months old. Barrister Ian Brownhill, who has acted for the Needham family (Pictured left, Christine Needham, Ben's grandmother, and right, his mother Kerry Needham), the mother of Ben Needham for free, told HuffPost UK that this right granted by the act was "essential" in his advocacy. He wrote to the Home Office asking why it had taken 10 months to reply to a funding request from South Yorkshire Police, after which it gave the force £700,000 to pay for English detectives to travel to Greece to continue the search. Brownhill said: "'In over 20 years since Ben Needham went missing the family never had a lawyer. They had no idea what Ben's rights or theirs' were. Last year I volunteered to help fill that gap. "The Needhams' right to a family life has been part of the successful campaign to persuade the government to fund a new investigation into Ben's disappearance. It's an honour and a pleasure as a lawyer to help the Needhams' understand and exercise their human rights." (credit:Amy Murphy/PA Wire)
Rape Victims Failed By The Police(02 of07)
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Two victims of cab driver rapist John Worboys (pictured) received damages after winning their claim that the Metropolitan Police breached their human rights when it botched an investigation that left him free to keep attacking. The women argued, and The High Court agreed, that the forces' repeated failings to catch him breached their article 3 right to be spared inhuman or degrading treatment. Mr Justice Green said one of the women would not have been raped but for "myriad failings in the investigative process". Worboys, who was jailed in 2009, is believed to have attacked more than 100 women. (credit:Metropolitan Police/PA Archive)
Gay People Kicked Out Of The Military(03 of07)
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Four people brought a case that ended the military's ban on gay people serving that forced them to leave the armed forces. (Pictured left to right) Duncan Lustig-Prean, Jeannette Smith, Graeme Grady and John Beckett said the ban breached their right to privacy - granted under the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court on Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled in their favour in September 1999. Three months after the judgment, the ban on gay people in the military was lifted. Then-defence secretary Geoff Hoon told the Commons sexuality was "essentially a private matter for the individual". (credit:WILLIAMS JUSTIN WILLIAMS/PA Archive)
Victims Of Human Trafficking(04 of07)
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A Tanzanian woman was "tricked" into coming to the UK in 2006 by the woman she worked for. She ended up being forced to work long hours for her parents as an unpaid domestic servant. She was fed only stale food, forced to sleep on a matress on the kitchen floor and only allowed out to attend church on Sundays. She fled their home - only to be forced to work in another home and fell very ill, developing a major breathing problem that would require lung surgery and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In 2010, the Home Office ordered she be sent back to Tanzania. Using the ECHR's ban on "forced labour", her lawyer successfully argued the British state owed her reparation - time to recover from the ordeal - for its failure to protect her from being trafficked into and then within the UK. A tribunal held that, in light of this, demanding she leave the UK, where she was being treated, would be "unreasonable". (credit:Scott Barbour via Getty Images)
The Grieving Families Of Dead Soldiers(05 of07)
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A new inquest into the death of a soldier at Deepcut barracks was ordered after a threat of litigation under the Human Rights Act by civil rights campaigners Liberty. Private Cheryl James was one of four soldiers to be found dead from gunshot wounds at the Surrey barracks. The original inquest in 1995 lasted only an hour and failed to speak to key witnesses or review important evidence, Liberty claimed. Last year, a new inquest was ordered. Lawyers for the family had obtained 44 volumes of statements, documents, notes and photographs after threatening litigation under the Human Rights Act. Her parents Doreen and Des James (pictured 1st and 2nd from the left) said: "Something went dreadfully wrong at Deepcut yet until now no one has bothered to look at how and why our daughter died. We can only hope that Cheryl's legacy helps change the current ineffective and discredited military justice system.” The new inquest will look whether a third party was involved in her death and what happened on the evening before she died. (credit:Dominic Lipinski/PA Archive)
Disabled People(06 of07)
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The Supreme Court found that three people had been deprived of their liberty by virtue of the restrictions imposed upon them by authorities caring for them. Two sisters, who both had learning difficulties, and a man born with cerebral palsy were living in a foster home, a residential home and a social services-arranged accommodation respectively - under close supervision to support them. One of the sisters was sometimes physically restrained when she was not co-operative. Lower courts ruled the trio's treatment did not amount to a deprivation of liberty, which meant the living arrangements need not be subject to independent checks to ensure it was still in their best interests. The Supreme Court noted that the European Court of Human Rights had made it clear it was "important not to confuse the question of the benevolent justification for the care arrangements with the concept of deprivation of liberty. Human rights have a universal character and physical liberty is the same foreveryone, regardless of their disabilities." (credit:Martin Barraud via Getty Images)
Children(07 of07)
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A nine-year-old boy (not pictured) was repeatedly beaten by his stepfather with a cane. The case went to trial with the man accused of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. A doctor had examined the boy and found him covered in bruises. The judge told the jury: "This case is not about whether you should punish a very difficult boy. It is about whether what was done here was reasonable or not and you must judge that." They acquitted the stepfather. The case reached the European Court on Human Rights in 1998 (again, this was before the HRA made going to British court an option). It found the law, which allowed parents to hit their children provided it was "reasonable chastisement", had failed to protect the child and breached his right to not suffer inhumane treatment. In 2004, parliament changed the "reasonable chastisement" defence so that it did not apply in such serious assaults. (credit:Shutterstock / luxorphoto)