The Equality and Human Rights Commission has u-turned on a promise to investigate the role played by the Department for Work and Pensions in the deaths of vulnerable benefit claimants, it’s being reported.
Instead the EHRC are now asking the DWP to create new policies in relation to claimants with mental health issues and learning difficulties. Apparently the commission is using the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse.
This Site forced the DWP to publish figures showing that thousands of people had died of unexplained causes after being thrown off benefits by that government department and I am deeply concerned by this failure to scrutinise whether the government caused these deaths.
And how many more people have died since I exposed those deaths seven years ago?
I shall be writing to the EHRC today, seeking a meaningful explanation for this u-turn.
UPDATE: Here’s what I have written to the EHRC:
“I was the writer who forced the DWP to admit that thousands of people have died after being thrown off benefits – for no established reason. I am deeply concerned that the EHRC has decided not to investigate the DWP’s role in the deaths of claimants and is choosing only to seek an agreement to better protect claimants – similar to other undertakings that the DWP has ignored in the past, causing more deaths. The DWP will never respect the human rights, or indeed the lives, of claimants unless it is forced to do so. I am writing to you to seek an explanation for your decision that I can publish to my readers. How will you defend this indefensible decision?”
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Justifying the unacceptable: as always, Priti Patel has shown herself to be callous, immoral and possibly homicidal.
Priti Patel has announced a “cruel and inhumane” deal to transport asylum seekers crossing the English Channel to Rwanda – a country where her own government has expressed concern about “extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture”.
Patel praised the record of the east African country on human rights. It was the site of the genocide of 800,000 people, exactly 28 years ago in 1994, in which members of the minority Tutsi group were murdered by the majority Hutus.
The genocide was carried out with shocking efficiency. Lists of Hutu government opponents were handed out to militias who killed them, along with all of their families. ID cards bored details of people’s ethnic group, so militias set up roadblocks where Tutsis were slaughtered. Thousands of Tutsi women were forced to become sex slaves.
The slaughter ended after 100 days, when the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front when a military victory against the Hutu government. The country is currently a dictatorship run by the RPF.
Critics of current president Paul Kagame have been murdered – or suffered assassination attempts – and concerns have been raised about the conviction on terrorism charges of Paul Rusesabagina, subject of Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda about his role saving more than 1,000 people during the genocide.
Only last year, the UK government – of which Priti Patel is Home Secretary – expressed serious concerns to the United Nations over “continued restrictions to civil and political rights and media freedom” in Rwanda, and called for independent investigations into those “allegations of extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture”.
And now Patel wants to send vulnerable refugees, who may have been victims of atrocity and torture, to this country. Perhaps she considers Rwanda’s record to be mild in comparison with her own views on what should happen to asylum-seekers.
It is – and always has been – a bizarre pose from the daughter of economic migrants from Uganda (originally of Indian origin). If she thinks the current wave of asylum seekers should not be allowed to stay in the UK, why haven’t she and all her family packed themselves off back to Uganda?
And is this really about solving the UK’s illegal immigration problem – or about saving ‘Big Dog’ Boris Johnson’s bacon?
He has been named by the Metropolitan Police as a criminal for attending illegal parties in Downing Street during Covid-19 lockdown.
According to the Telegraph, he’s facing a second fine over former communication chief Lee Cain’s leaving party, where he is understood to have made a speech and remained in attendance for a considerable amount of time.
🔴 EXCLUSIVE: Boris Johnson facing second ‘partygate’ fine over aide’s leaving eventhttps://t.co/tlfucezRv5
The knock-on effect is that he has lied to Parliament – an offence for which there is only one penalty: He must resign as prime minister.
But the overprivileged, entitled criminal and liar doesn’t want to go, so it seems he is looking for a way to distract us from his crimes.
So suddenly he’s on our TV’s appealing to NIMBYs (people who say Not In My Back Yard to particular events or plans) across the UK to support what he called a “shared humanitarian impulse” with a nation whose human rights record is, let’s be honest – terrifying.
This Writer hopes it’s a grave miscalculation.
People don’t want to be overcome by waves of refugees seeking to settle in the UK in response to the foreign adventures of Tory (and other) governments who have merrily bombed their own countries into rubble, but there is an obvious answer to that: stop bombing their countries.
The excuse that asylum seekers are encouraging and enriching people smugglers is a lie. In fact, Johnson’s government – and especially Patel herself – is encouraging people smugglers by closing off all legal routes into the UK.
He says they should only take such legal routes, but that is impossible when they don’t exist!
So I hope the people of the UK see through this transparent attempt to whitewash a dirty, corrupt politician by scapegoating people who only want to be able to live in peace, in a peaceful country.
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Dominic Raab: it has been said that racists love to drape themselves in their country’s flag – and now we find he is injecting racism into his overhaul of human rights in the UK.
This Site – and others – told you years ago that if the Conservatives had a chance to modify your human rights, you would suffer. This is just one example.
Dominic Raab wants to strip human rights protections from people who have been targeted by police for ‘stop and search’ procedures and/or questioning over their immigration status.
Ethnic minority groups are far more likely to have been targeted in these ways and Raab knows it. But he still wants them to be used as excuses to deny people human rights protections.
That is racist.
We should be glad Liberty is fighting against this:
“Migrants, prisoners and people with historic ‘poor conduct’ won’t get the same rights as those with citizenship, or without a criminal record, which will have racist impacts”, Martha Spurrier, the organisation’s director, told The Independent.
“It will put over-policed communities at risk of losing their rights – even though these are the groups most likely to face a human rights violation by the state.”
The warning comes as Liberty warns the shake-up is far more draconian than expected, something obscured in recent months by public focus on Covid, Partygate and the Ukraine war.
And if you think this is bad, you can be sure that worse is to follow.
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Dominic Raab: this flag-waving fascist (have you read Britannia Unchained at all?) is planning to strip you of your human rights. You probably know somebody who voted for it. Make sure you tell them how badly they will be affected!
What a nasty Christmas present!
(And how do you feel about the fact that we were kept from knowing this was about to happen until the very day?)
You can tell that a government is about to attack you when its spokespeople say forthcoming changes are “common sense”.
Dominic Raab is a long-term opponent of human rights for people who aren’t high-ranking Tories and his proposals to “reform” the Human Rights Act into a “Bill of Rights”, that allows you to do only what he and his corruption-raddled mates say, is a reflection of that.
Dominic Raab said in 2009, "I don’t support the Human Rights Act and I don’t believe in economic and social rights."
(This is why he's been made Justice Secretary)
Today he will attempt to achieve this long-held aim and announce measures to take away our hard-won human rights.
The BBC is frantically trying to cushion the blow by trying to convince us that the changes are merely part of the Tories’ ongoing racist agenda:
The government proposes changing the law to introduce specific circumstances in which a foreign national offender could not claim a right to family life in the UK to challenge their deportation.
The plans do not include proposals that would change the law concerning the potential return to other countries of migrants arriving in dinghies.
Mr Raab said: “Our plans for a bill of rights will strengthen typically British rights like freedom of speech and trial by jury, while preventing abuses of the system and adding a healthy dose of common sense.”
But you can be sure that the proposals include a lot more than simply preventing abuse of the Human Rights Act by foreign-born criminals that no court has ever allowed to happen (to our knowledge).
(Nor will it be limited to this plus a confused attack on the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that doesn’t change a system currently in place.)
And how is he protecting our right to free speech when his buddy (and co-author of Britannia Unchained) Priti Patel is criminalising protest?
No – as I stated only last month, Raab’s plan isn’t to take away the Right to Family Life from criminals who didn’t have it anyway – he’s taking the Right to Family Life away from everybody – and that includes you.
Here’s a lawyer to explain:
8. In fact, human rights legislation protects us all. The HRA was introduced to "bring home" the European Convention on Human Rights – a Convention heavily supported by Churchill, to prevent states committing the kinds of horrors we saw in Germany in WW2
According to the BBC, Raab’s proposals do not constitute a departure from the European Convention (but of course the devil’s in the detail).
10. By constantly using "foreign bogie man" examples, the Tories blow a massive racist dogwhistle to convince people what they plan will only affect "them" and never you or your loved ones. Be very careful what you wish for.
In other words, this is yet another iteration of the tactic the Tories have stolen back from Nazi Germany: divide and rule. By pretending to be attacking Johnny Foreigner, they get away with imposing tight restrictions on you – and as they strip you of your freedoms, you greet them with rapturous applause.
That’s if you’re a stupid racist, of course.
There’s no point in trying to stop it, by the way. As I said in November, the Tories have a massive Parliamentary majority which means they’ll push through this attack on you, no matter how much you try to complain about it now.
The time to complain was November and December 2019, in the run-up to that year’s general election, but people were too busy banging on about Boris Johnson “getting Brexit done” (how did that turn out, again?) and the lies about Jeremy Corbyn. I hope you weren’t part of that.
And Labour under Keir Starmer will not oppose the changes because he supports any plan to strip you of your rights to the hilt. He’s an Establishment man and a former Director of Public Prosecutions; of course he does.
I await the details with trepidation as I fear they will confirm what I have been saying since the Tories first announced their intention to restrict us with a Bill of Rights, back in 2014.
Your only course of action is simple: to educate your Tory friends about the danger they have created for all of us and beg them never to do anything as stupid as vote Tory again.
I doubt many will take up this challenge. Looking at the number of people who can’t even bear to share Tory-critical articles on the social media for fear of a bit of talkback, it seems most of them are well and truly silenced by the bullies.
But hope springs eternal.
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Priti Patel: beneath that smug smile lurks nothing but pure evil. And nearly 14 million people wholeheartedly voted for her to strip them of their human rights and liberties.
Who knew that Boris Johnson’s Tory government, elected on a landslide because it promised us “sunlit uplands” of freedom, would prove to be the greatest threat to liberty in the history of the United Kingdom?
Well… Vox Political did, obviously, because I wrote about it before the 2019 general election. Perhaps people were deterred from reading it by the constant lies about This Writer being an anti-Semite, or the lies that only the Tory-biased mass media could possibly be able to give you the facts.
At the time, I wrote: “Page 48 of the Conservative Party manifesto… states: “We will update the Human Rights Act and administrative law to ensure that there is a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government.” It means: We will remove your right to protest against our dictatorship and if you try to stop us, we will use the police and the armed forces to PUT YOU DOWN.
“If you vote Conservative on December 12, that is what you are demanding.”
And nearly 14 million people, led by the nose by people like Laura Kuenssberg, Andrew Marr and Robert Peston, merrily voted away the hard-won liberties enjoyed by the other 54 million of us as well.
Now we find that, having already introduced dictatorial anti-protest measures in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill last March, Home Secretary Priti Patel has apparently decided, halfway through its progress through Parliament, that it is not harsh enough and has amended it to make it even worse.
And this is a Bill that proposes outlawing protest that makes any noise or disturbs, in any way, a single person (thereby obviating the point of any protest, which is to draw attention to the issue under protest)!
Here’s Nadia Whittome with the headlines:
If you thought the Policing Bill was bad before, that was nothing compared to the latest version.
Priti Patel has quietly added further measures to effectively criminalise protest.
These laws belong in a dictatorship, not a democracy.
Most terrifying of all: new Asbo-like orders can be imposed on protesters, even if no crime is committed.
These remove rights to freedom of speech and assembly + can ban you from certain places, seeing certain people, carrying certain items, encouraging protest online. 3/5
So “stop and search” powers, currently used by police if they have “reasonable grounds for suspecting” someone is carrying certain items or something which could be used to violate certain laws, like burglary or theft – and habitually abused by them to victimise people of colour – are being expanded, rather than restricted.
The Bill proposes that they now be used “whether or not the constable has any grounds for suspecting that the person… is carrying a prohibited object” in order to avoid “serious disruption” or a “public nuisance”. So police will be able to stop and search anybody, for any reason that comes into their heads.
Anyone obstructing a stop and search during a protest risks imprisonment for nearly a year. This is how dictatorships behave.
Two new amendments appear to be intended to stop the Insulate Britain protesters who have been supergluing themselves to roads – but the wording is so loose that it may be used indiscriminately against the general public.
So Amendment 319A creates an offence of “locking on”, or carrying equipment which might facilitate it, targeting anyone who attaches themselves to “a person, to an object or to land”. It could equally be applied to protestors who link arms during a sit-down protest, or even hold hands – or to people walking past a protest, having nothing to do with it, who just happen to be carrying a fixative of any kind. Such a person could also find him- or herself in prison for 51 weeks.
Isn’t it handy for Patel that outlawing the kind of protest carried out by Suffragettes a century ago means she’ll be able to get on and deport all those black people she hates so much, without being stopped by people blocking the road outside detention centres. She knew what she was doing.
And then there’s the new ASBO for people who want to protest against Tory dictatorship:
The most far-reaching and alarming part of the legislation is called an SDPO, or Serious Disruption Prevention Order. It is one of the most egregious assaults on individual freedom we’ve seen in modern legislation.
An SDPO is basically a protest Asbo. It can be imposed on anyone convicted of a “protest-related offence”. This category alone is extremely broad. It potentially applies, under the provisions of the bill itself, to the examples above – possessing superglue near a demonstration, or holding hands during a protest.
even that is not enough. Amendment 342M.2.iii allows it to be imposed on people whose activities “were likely to result in serious disruption”. In other words, you do not even have to have been convicted of a crime. You do not even need to have caused disruption. It’s enough that you might have.
Once the order is imposed, it eradicates your rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Those under an order can be forced to report to the authorities whenever the courts demand it, as often as they demand it. They must “present themselves to a particular person at a particular place at… particular times on particular days”.
They can also be prohibited from being at a certain place, or possessing certain items, or participating in certain activities, or socialising with certain people, for up to two years. They can be blocked from using the internet to “encourage” people to “carry out activities related to a protest”. Someone who used their social media account to promote a demonstration could be found in breach of the order. The SDPOs are a full-scale assault on the individual’s human rights. And they can apply even if they’ve never been convicted of a crime.
So that’s be it for This Writer; I have written in support of many protests in the past, including those attacking Tory government crimes against liberty.
This is really frightening. A big step towards authoritarianism, without meaningful parliamentary consent. In the UK, now. https://t.co/skDVqAXIi2
And if the people who voted this dictatorship saw reports of protesters being jailed under these proposed new powers, what do you think they’d say?
They would say the protesters – or innocent bystanders – deserved it because their protest was against the law – as though it always had been.
These people never seem to learn from their mistakes.
Imagine their surprise and shock when the Tories take their houses away from them to pay for social care (or name any other recent Tory attack on poor/working class people) and they feel the same law applied to them when they try to oppose it.
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Priti Patel: if she really wants to stop terrorism by people from foreign countries, she can do something about it right now. What she’s actually trying to do is strip YOU of your hard-won human rights.
Home Secretary Priti Patel has said the suspect in the Liverpool suicide bombing was able to exploit the UK’s “dysfunctional” asylum system – a system that she runs.
Oh, but wait! Apparently this was because he came to the UK in 2014 – when former prime minister Theresa May was Home Secretary. So it’s all her fault!
And we know that May forced Patel out of her cabinet when the current Home Secretary was found trying to operate her own foreign policy with the apartheid state of Israel, back in 2017. So there’s no love lost there.
It all seems like a burst of frantic ass-covering to This Writer.
And I’m not the only one:
#KayBurley – Priti Patel has said what happened in Liverpool was a result of a dysfunctional asylum system?
Thangam Debbonaire – That's extraordinary… the Tory Party has actually been in charge of the asylum system for the past 11 years… pic.twitter.com/il8EzVZY6g
The fact is that the Tories have been in charge of the immigration and asylum system for 11 years and have talked tough about it all the way through.
If a terrorist was allowed to stay in the UK for seven of those years – when he should not have been – then that is the responsibility of the current Home Secretary who has failed to correct the faults of previous incumbents.
If they were honest, the Tories would admit that they are trying to make us accept their sick plan to destroy UK human rights.
They say repealing the Human Rights Act would make it harder for illegal immigrants to stay in the UK – but they don’t admit that it will also remove all the other rights that protect us.
For the gory details, see what This Site has published about it here and here.
The vast majority of the rights you will lose have nothing to do with illegal immigration, asylum or terrorism.
But you can rest assured that the vast majority of you will be harmed by their loss.
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One rule for him: remember, Dominic Raab is the Tory minister who couldn’t be bothered to return to work from holiday when Kabul fell. He breaks government rules habitually yet presumes to lecture us on the law.
Remember: this is what the UK voted for:
In a move designed to strengthen authoritarianism, Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said today that an overhaul of the U.K.’s Human Rights Act would include a “mechanism” to “correct” rulings by the European Court of Human Rights. We live in dangerous times as fascism looms large.
Dominic Raab has decided that if human rights judges in the UK make decisions that he doesn’t like, he will override them in blatant disregard of the rule of law.
This is what the UK voted for.
In a blatant rhetorical reversal of what actually happens, he has said that he would stop “judicial legislation” – that is, judges making UK law. But they don’t; they never have. They simply apply the law of the land to individual cases. Stopping this would be breaking the law.
You see, so-called “case law” – legal precedents set by judges – are only examples of the way the law should be interpreted when applied to particular situations, to be followed if such situations arise again in order to avoid contradiction and confusion. They are not situations in which judges take legislative power for themselves and Raab is lying by suggesting that.
But this is what the UK voted for.
He said he wanted to stop the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg from dictating law to the UK, but…
1 The Human Rights Act is British law, enforced by British Judges in British Courts 2 If our Parliament doesn’t like a judgment, then it has a mechanism to override it, it’s called Legislation 3 Blaming foreigners for it is dishonest 4 Challenging Govt is the basis of democracy pic.twitter.com/yH8YIDdPig
Human rights lawyer Jessica Simor QC said that Raab’s plan would have an effect opposite to what he was suggesting, because it would mean
more complaints going to Strasbourg and more rulings against the UK, unless the government intended to pull Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights altogether, which would be “a step into a dark place for this country and the world”
But if that happened, it’s what the UK voted for.
The former head of the government’s legal service, Jonathan Jones, said:
As parliament is already able to legislate to correct flaws in the law, it appeared Mr Raab was trying to use a new mechanism to allow ministers to take this step without obtaining MPs’ approval.
In other words: dictatorship.
It’s what the UK voted for.
Cambridge professor of public law Mark Elliott pointed to a recent Supreme Court ruling, saying that allowing a minister to overrule a decision of the judiciary simply because he did not agree with it would cut across “principles that are fundamental components of the rule of law”.
It’s what the UK voted for.
“If that is what is in contemplation, then that is profoundly problematic,” said Prof Elliott. “Indeed it turns constitutional principle on its head.
“Ministerial power to do this would itself be deeply troubling. It would reassign a basic judicial role – interpreting the law – to ministers.
“Ultimately, this all strikes me as part of a project to enhance executive supremacy by treating courts, whether foreign or domestic, as unwelcome interlopers.
“And yet all of this masquerades as an attempt to protect parliament. The reality of this executive power project, as we might call it, is that it will be the executive that is the principal beneficiary of such changes, and the loser will be basic standards of good governance.”
It’s what the UK voted for.
You don't really expect better from Raab do you – it was only recently that he discovered he lived on an island, we know he is illiterate in Geography & maths so he's bound to be just as illiterate in comprehension & law is way too complicated for him. https://t.co/xuYPVP4uJF
Did anybody know? This Writer made clear what was going to happen in articles published before the 2019 election but I don’t have the reach of the mass media organisations who were screaming at everyone to vote Tory or else face a future of horrific Communism under Jeremy Corbyn.
It seems that, faced with such an onslaught, many people voted without thinking.
And isn’t that exactly how the Hitlers and Mussolinis of the 20th century took power?
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Dominic Raab: he’s planning to strip YOU of YOUR RIGHTS, so let’s remember that he ignores the rules whenever he feels like it. Here we can see him licking his finger to turn a page, in conflict with the then-enforced rule to avoid touching our faces, and certainly not to touch things that have been handled by other people and then lick our fingers. We have let imbeciles like this impose their tyranny on us.
Remember Dominic Raab’s speech to the Tory conference, in which he promised to attack the Human Rights Act, claiming that he would remove the ability for an illegal immigrant convicted of domestic violence to avoid deportation by claiming the right to family life?
You will, of course, understand that he was using a solitary incident – that is hypothetical; it is doubtful that any court has ever allowed it to happen – to justify removing human rights from all of us.
No?
You didn’t get that from what he was saying?
If not, then here’s an expert to explain:
2. But what Raab is seeking to do is take that right away from everyone – however sustainable their claim may be – on the basis of a few that might push their luck.
— CrémantCommunarde#TimeToBreakthrough 🕊️⚖️ 🟠🌤 (@0Calamity) October 6, 2021
4. The UK Borders Act 2007 effectively says anyone convicted of an offence who is sentenced to 12mths imprisonment or more will be automatically deported unless to do so would be a breach of their human rights or the Refugee Convention
— CrémantCommunarde#TimeToBreakthrough 🕊️⚖️ 🟠🌤 (@0Calamity) October 6, 2021
6. It is rare that the Tribunals find that it is "unduly harsh" – usually if they do it is because there are children involved who will suffer grim consequences. Raab and Patel know this.
— CrémantCommunarde#TimeToBreakthrough 🕊️⚖️ 🟠🌤 (@0Calamity) October 6, 2021
8. In fact, human rights legislation protects us all. The HRA was introduced to "bring home" the European Convention on Human Rights – a Convention heavily supported by Churchill, to prevent states committing the kinds of horrors we saw in Germany in WW2
— CrémantCommunarde#TimeToBreakthrough 🕊️⚖️ 🟠🌤 (@0Calamity) October 6, 2021
10. By constantly using "foreign bogie man" examples, the Tories blow a massive racist dogwhistle to convince people what they plan will only affect "them" and never you or your loved ones. Be very careful what you wish for.
— CrémantCommunarde#TimeToBreakthrough 🕊️⚖️ 🟠🌤 (@0Calamity) October 6, 2021
Of course, there’s nothing to be done about this at the moment; the Tories have a massive Parliamentary majority and the plan for this has existed for at least seven years. Worse still, Labour under Keir Starmer will never oppose the plan; he supports the removal of your rights.
The best thing you can do right now is to educate your Tory-voting friends (you’re bound to know someone, right? Otherwise, how did they win the election?) into understanding that they voted to deprive themselves of vital rights.
And those of you who are socialists need to work to rid the Labour Party of the entryists who have perverted it into the opposite of what it should be.
You still have three years before the next election, so what’s it to be? Get busy – or give up?
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Dominic Raab: do you really trust him not to deprive you of your human rights? Only last March, as Foreign Secretary, he admitted that the Tory government will seek trade deals with nations whose governments violate the human rights of their citizens.
Hardline Tory headbanger Dominic Raab has revived their plan to repeal the law that enshrines your human rights – using the same tired old arguments they always wheel out.
He said it allows dangerous criminals to escape justice. One of the examples he quoted was of an illegal immigrant claiming the right to family life to avoid deportation, having fathered children in the UK but played no active part in their upbringing.
Hang on a moment! This Writer reported on the Tories’ use of that excuse to support their plan to replace the Human Rights Act with a ‘Bill of Rights’ – on which they would decide what rights you would be allowed to have – back in 2014!
He came thoroughly unstuck when he tried to use a new example of criminality that should deprive a person of the right to family life. Back in 2014 the example was of a foreign criminal who had caused death by dangerous driving then using that right to avoid deportation.
This time, showing the usual Tory tin ear for current affairs, Raab suggested that a good example would be of a domestic abuser claiming the right to family life – “a drug dealer convicted of beating his ex-partner”.
Gracie Bradley, director of human rights campaign group Liberty, pointed out that this is
“a time when we’re having a really painful conversation about these abuses of power, including in respect of violence against women”.
“It’s really quite cynical of Dominic Raab to be using that example of violence against women, domestic abuse, as justification for overhauling the Human Rights Act, when it has been instrumental in ensuring women’s rights.”
“This is the government using extreme cases to take actions that will undermine the ability of all of us to hold the government to account and ensure our rights are respected.
“We have to remember that the Human Rights Act is a tool that all of us can use. It helped the families of people who died in the Hillsborough disaster to secure justice for their loved ones.”
Raab’s speech gives us a very good idea of what his planned “overhaul” of our human rights will entail. Here’s a preview – that I’m pasting in (almost) unedited from my article of 2014 [comments from today’s perspective in square brackets]:
The new [ha ha!] measure will:
Repeal Labour’s 1998 Human Rights Act.
Break the formal link between British courts and the European Court of Human Rights. In future Britain’s courts will no longer be required to take into account rulings from the Court in Strasbourg. This will make our Supreme Court the ultimate arbiter of human rights matters in the UK.
End the ability of the European Court to require the UK to change British laws. Every judgement against the UK will be treated as advisory and will have to be approved by Parliament if it is to lead to a change in our laws.
Define much more clearly when and how Human Rights laws in the UK are to be applied. This will end the ability of the Courts to decide unilaterally to apply Human Rights laws to whole new areas of public life.
Limit the use of Human Rights laws to the most serious cases. They will no longer apply in trivial cases.
Balance rights and responsibilities. People who do not fulfil their responsibilities in society should not be able to claim so-called “qualified rights” in their defence in a court of law.
Ensure that those who pose a national security risk to this country or have entered it illegally cannot rely on questionable human rights claims to prevent their deportation.
Examples of how the new law will be different include:
Terrorists and serious criminals who pose a significant threat to the security and safety of UK citizens would lose their right to stay here under Human Rights Laws.
People who commit serious crimes in the UK, and in doing so infringe upon the basic rights of others, should lose their right to claim the right to stay here under the right to family life. So for example, a foreign criminal, guilty of causing death by dangerous driving and so taking away the rights of another citizen, would not be able to claim family rights to stay in the UK.
No one would be able to claim human rights to allow them to step outside the law that applies to all other citizens, for example a group of travellers claiming the right to family life to breach planning laws.
The right to family life would be much more limited in scope. For example an illegal immigrant would not be able to claim the right to family life to stay in the UK because he had fathered children here when he is playing no active part in the upbringing of those children.
Limit the reach of human rights cases to the UK, so that British Armed forces overseas are not subject to persistent human rights claims that undermine their ability to do their job and keep us safe.
Basic rights, like the right to a fair trial and the right to life which are an essential part of a modern democratic society will be protected, we are told.
But there is much more to the European Convention on Human Rights – which the Human Rights Act enshrines in UK law – than that.
What about nation states’ primary duty, to “refrain from unlawful killing”, to “investigate suspicious deaths” and to “prevent foreseeable loss of life”?
What about the prohibition on slavery or forced labour?
What about the prohibition of the retroactive criminalisation of acts and omissions?
What about the right to privacy?
What about the right to freedom of expression? If … the Human Rights Act [is replaced], will Vox Political be banned and Yr Obdt Srvt arrested for Thought Crime?
What about the right to freedom of assembly and association? Will this mean the end of trade unions? Will it mean the end of legal political protest [in fact, Priti Patel is already busy banning it]?
What about the prohibition of discrimination? What about the right to effective remedy for violations of these rights?
Be afraid.
Tories – especially the real hardliners like Raab – have a habit of saying they’ll make one change and then change a dozen others because they can.
He’s already pretending his plans will protect you – and we’ve already seen that this is another Tory lie.
But the Tories have an unassailable Parliamentary majority – for the first time since I started writing about this plan, all those years ago.
They can literally do whatever they want – and they are planning on doing it to you.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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Manifesto commitment: the Conservatives made their plan to end democracy clear in their 2019 election manifesto. Every Conservative voter demanded an end to democracy and a slide into dictatorship.
Boris Johnson is getting back to business after the Covid crisis – and his business is stripping you of the liberties and freedoms your ancestors fought hard to win over the last several hundred years.
Be in no doubt: you will have lost most of your rights by the end of this Parliamentary term, and you can thank your Tory-voting neighbour for making it happen.
Included in the Queen’s Speech were announcements that all three main planks of the attack on democracy – listed on Page 48 of the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto, so everybody who voted Tory absolutely supported them – are still going forward. They are:
Removing your right to protest so they can use the police and armed forces to put down any dissent.
"This law would threaten the public’s right to protest and undermine Britain’s reputation on the world stage. It is deeply illiberal and undemocratic and we will continue to campaign to stop it." @pimlicathttps://t.co/JeNRvYmxvp
Imposing dictatorship by ensuring that the courts cannot stop the Tories from breaking the law.
Government plans to *restore the balance of power between executive, legislature & the courts* are ominous threat to the ability of Parliament to hold ministers to account & the independence of our judiciary#QueensSpeech
The only one of these that has been given prominence by the mainstream media is the last – the planned repeal of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. This has been reported as meaning that Johnson would be able to call elections before his Parliament has served its full five-year term.
But it could also mean that he will allow himself to delay elections indefinitely.
The FTP Act repealed the previous electoral law that allowed prime ministers to call elections at any time during their five-year term, but demanded that they must call an election to be held after five years, no matter what.
So repealing the FTP Act means that unscrupulous prime ministers like Johnson would be able to call elections whenever they liked – or simply neglect to call them at all and remain in power indefinitely.
This is what will happen unless he specifically writes new limitations on Parliamentary terms into his new law. And why would a corrupt liar like Johnson do that when he has a majority of 80 seats in the Commons and can currently do whatever he likes without fear of punishment?
Worse still, the new legislative programme includes more attacks on democracy, the most important being the planned limitation of the right to vote to those who can afford to show the proper photographic identification.
This, Johnson claims, is to stop electoral fraud. You may assume that this is a rampant problem across the UK, but in fact it is practically nonexistent. His plan will strip the vote from around two million people:
There were 6 cases of voter fraud at the last election.
To solve this, the govt will introduce a law making that will prevent approx 2 million from voting.
This is #VoterSuppression, and Labour, Tory or anything in between, if you believe in democracy, you should oppose it.
The plan will strip votes from people who are poor and young – in other words, people who will not vote for the Conservatives at the next election. It is corrupt Tory gerrymandering to prevent the voice of the people from being heard at elections.
There were just SIX cases of voter fraud at last election. Yet these plans could disenfranchise voters who don’t have photo ID – overwhelmingly the young and the poor. Hard to escape the feeling this is an assault on democracy. https://t.co/VeOSFlSVsP
Typically of the current Tory government, its MPs tried to justify the planned law by lying to us about it. Gillian Keegan, whoever she is, claimed you need photo ID to pick up a parcel from the Post Office – and was put straight in no uncertain terms by fact-checking site Full Fact:
Gillian Keegan MP has said you need photo ID to collect a parcel from the Post Office in defence of plans to require photo ID to vote.
Many of us think valuable Parliamentary time would be better spent preventing the kind of corruption that allowed Tory cronies to gain multi-million pound contracts to provide vital supplies in the fight against Covid-19, that they were totally unable to fulfil. What happened to all that money?
— Parliament View #GetVaccinated (@parliamentview) May 11, 2021
It's a shame the Tories weren't checking IDs when Hancock gave two PPE deals worth more than £90 million to a faceless Chinese firm listed at a hotel room in Beijing.
Finally, shall we consider the misplaced priorities of these entitled Tories who have spent more than a decade manslaughtering benefit claimants without feeling any need to reform the system?
They brought in ID cards after 6 cases of voter fraud but did nothing when their policies killed 120000 disabled people.
'Six are too many' said Hancock about #VoterID but 120000 isn't apparently.#QueensSpeech
— Gay, Autistic, Disabled And Proud. ♿🏳️🌈 (@criptheirvote) May 11, 2021
Come to that, why isn’t the government introducing plans to end tax evasion? I mention this because the deaths of disabled benefit claimants are linked to the Tory clampdown on claims – the so-called “magic cures” that claimed hundreds of thousands of people were not disabled at all, despite volumes of medical evidence showing they were. These people were unceremoniously stripped of their benefits and many of them subsequently died. The figure of 120,000, quoted above, is a very low estimate.
The Tories spend huge amounts of money every year on their campaign to strip disabled people of their ability to survive. It is a campaign of persecution that has been more successful in eliminating the disabled than the infamous Nazi “Aktion T4” in 1930s and 1940s Germany. In comparison, they spend hardly anything on tracking the rich Tories – let’s not deny it – who have evaded their tax responsibilities in order to squirrel away trillions of pounds in tax havens abroad.
Absent from the new legislative programme are any plans to support the rights of workers with promised reforms to zero-hours contracts and the gig economy, and an end to the practice of “fire and rehire” – terminating workers’ contracts and then demanding they take new contracts with lower pay and fewer privileges:
— Prof Kailash Chand OBE FRCGP (@KailashChandOBE) May 11, 2021
“Fire and rehire” is a key element of Howard Beckett’s campaign to lead the UK’s largest union, Unite. He was in London to campaign about it while the Queen was delivering her speech:
Fire and rehire is ripping through UK workplaces – around one in ten workers face this despicable practise from unscrupulous bosses using the pandemic to destroy hard-won Ts and Cs. @BeckettUnite is in Parliament today to call an end to #FireAndRehirepic.twitter.com/wchTkUxaG4
He has also made the very obvious point that the currrent Labour leadership has no interest in looking after the interests of British workers – because Keir Starmer actually refused to oppose “fire and rehire”.
The current Labour Leader was asked to sign this and said no. It is a slap in the face to workers facing fire & rehire. He should add his name now and say sorry. He won’t. pic.twitter.com/RShGwZkI52
— NHSActivistRN 🏴 #NHSPAY15 #FBNHS (@NHSActivistRN) May 11, 2021
The oppression goes on and on:
No10 confirms it wants to remove the right of refugees to challenge immigration decisions in the High Court, in order to “increase the efficiency of the courts” and “provide clarity in the legal system”.
Long-awaited plans for reform of social care – promised by the Tories years ago – went undiscussed. There is no plan for such reforms in the current Parliamentary term.
Admittedly, Andy Burnham is right to say all parties are responsible for allowing social care to fall into the disrepair we have today; New Labour failed to do anything about it too.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham tells @cathynewman “all parties are culpable” on social care and he doesn’t “consider it radical to apply NHS principles to social care”.https://t.co/2ak1bO0VNH
He spent the whole of 2020 lying about the severity of Covid-19 and justifying his decisions to award government contracts worth billions of pounds to Tory cronies who couldn’t fulfil them. What are his words worth?
Oh, and before anyone suggests that plans to address the climate crisis show at least some hope for the Tories, they don’t:
Queen’s Speech climate measures ‘missed opportunity to show world leadership’ https://t.co/ZqJxaSpsDt
For a more detailed attack on the new legislative programme, take a look at Unite’s response (under current leader Len McCluskey). I’m sure other critiques are also available.
“This Queen's speech reveals the nasty, repressive side of this government” – @LenMcCluskey
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
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1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
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