The UK Government has a Bill of Rights bill which (at the time of writing) is in the Commons for its second reading.

Many civil liberties commentators have expressed alarm about the Bill, suggesting that it risks watering down the rights of UK citizens.

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 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, 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 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, will 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.

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 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.

Article of the UDHR	Fundamentalist Position	Impact on UK citizens
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.	“The new Sovereign Individual will operate like the gods of myth in the same physical environment as the ordinary, subject citizen, but in a separate realm politically.”	We are at grave risk of rights being entirely linked to wealth. We have already seen UK life expectancy begin to fall – especially in the poorest areas. The right to life is already wealth-dependent and risks becoming more so.
Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.	People have the right not to be the victims of violence. They do not have the right to demand the government to support their lives if they cannot do so themselves.	The police will protect the rich from the poor, but no one will protect the poor from the rich.
Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law…	People have the same right to legal process, but as for legal advice, they cannot demand the government pay for their costs.	Legal aid has been drastically reduced. For many people in the UK, justice is now out of reach.
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.	Owning property is the result of hard work and intelligence, fairly rewarded. “An impossible ‘right’ to economic security, is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It means a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t.”	Some wealthy people do immense damage to society and many wealthy heirs need never work a day. At the same time, those who do the most valuable jobs for society – providing food and healthcare for example – are increasingly unable to survive on what they earn.
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.	“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. … capitalism simply is not that popular with the crowd… broader education of the body politic has become a fool’s errand. Indeed, even more pessimistically, the trend has been going the wrong way for a long time… Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” “Mass democracy leads to control of government by its ‘employees’. But wait. You may be saying that in most jurisdictions there are many more voters than there are persons on the government payroll. How could it be possible for employees to dominate under such conditions? The welfare state emerged to answer exactly this quandary.”	The Elections Act is another step towards the erosion of ‘mass democracy’ in the UK. Getting rid of mass democracy will enable removal of the welfare state.
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.	People have a duty to work and to support themselves and their families.       It is their responsibility to ensure that their market value is high enough for them to do that.	Even though the economy is larger (per head in real terms) than it was in 2010, the median earner is now worse off. This is a period of mass impoverishment not seen since the 1820s.
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.	Everyone is responsible for his own market value. If it is too low to deliver 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 to build up savings adequate to provide security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood, that is a matter for the individual to rectify.	Since workers have little bargaining power, wages have stagnated, and foodbank usage has shot up. We are a becoming a nation where a significant and growing part of the population cannot survive without charity.
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.	“… Hence as radical options for schools education, ministers may wish to consider a substantial reduction in the resources going to the public sector, or compulsory charging for schooling.”	Those who can afford private education already see far higher spending per head on their children’ education. State education will increasingly become a second-class option leading to second-class opportunities.

Conclusion

We should certainly be concerned about the Bill of Rights Bill, but we should see it not as an individual and misconceived attempt to redraft UK human rights 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.

To secure the future of the UK, we need:

• Moderates and progressives in all political parties (including the Conservatives) to realise how high the stakes have become and to co-operate to avoid another Conservative government – together, moderates and progressives have a very good chance of winning;
• Voters to drop their traditional party allegiances and vote tactically – it is unlikely that the next government will be perfect, but it need not be destructive, and voters have the power to elect the least harmful option;
• Non-voters to understand that – even if in the past they did not feel that their vote could make a difference, it can now(as the results in Shropshire North, Chesham and Amersham, Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton all show, there is no longer such a thing as a safe seat).

And meanwhile, we need to make sure that as many UK citizens as possible understand the threats to their rights and their – and their children’s – future.

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