Why are Tony Blair and Gordon Brown trying to deny us the Charter of Fundamental Rights ?
What with all the media spin by the UK Government and the European Union and the shallow analysis and reporting by the mainstream media, we are puzzled as to what exactly has been agreed at the European Union summit in Brussels this weekend.
We are still especially worried about what exactly Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have agreed to with regard to the European Union Reform Treaty and especially, the legally binding Charter of Fundamental Rights (.pdf) These sort of follow the European Convention on Human Rights and the UK's Human Rights Act 2000:
Article 7 Respect for private and family lifeEveryone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.
Article 8 Protection of personal data
1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.
2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.
3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority.
However, there are significant differences i,e, there are no explicit exemptions for the Government using vague weasel words like "national security" or "the prevention or detection of crime" or "public health" or "the economic interests of the UK" etc. which so much UK legislation has embedded into it.
Nothing seems to have changed since we commented on this back in 2004: Have the pundits actually bothered to read the EU Constitution ?
See also this confusing BBC background article on Charter of Fundamental Rights
Is there really a workable United Kingdom "opt out" from these clauses ?
If so, then why should we tolerate authoritarian Labour politicians who seek to deny us these human rights, which are enjoyed and legally enforced by the rest of the European Union ?
We demand that these existing human rights are upheld now and ratified by this UK Government and all future ones.
Comments
You seem to be implying that the uk doesn't belong to any European human rights treaties, what about the European convention on human rights which is more thorougher and legally binding then this Charter of Fundamental Rights
Posted by: Alec | June 24, 2007 8:03 PM
@ Alec - the European Convention on Human Rights covers more countries than the European Union, and has had most, but not all of its clauses incorporated into UK law via the Human Rights Act 2000.
The ECHR pre-dates, for example, the huge increase in electronic personal data and communications, so it is no surprise that it does not mention them at all i.e. it is not as thorough as the Charter of Fundamental Rights in that respect.
The COFR does include, for instance Article 13 the right to an effective remedy, which is not incorporated into UK law via the Human Rights Act. This would allow UK citizens to sue people public bodies and the Government in UK courts for breaching their human rights, something which the Labour government, has denied us.
There are huge "coach and horses" exemptions under the Human Rights Act or the Data Protection Act, for "national security", the "detection or prevention of crime" etc which drastically weaken the effective rights enjoyed by an individual.
If the Charter of Fundamental Rights were to be adopted as being legally binding, as so many other European Union countries have accepted, then the rights of the innocent, under these UK laws, might be re-balanced properly in favour of the individual against the Kafkaesque faceless petty bureaucracy of endless rules and regulations, which have been introduced by Labour politicians, which even the apparatchiki themselves do not fully understand, or have any chance of administering fairly and equally.
If it were to be adopted under English, Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish law, then it might prevent authoritarian politicians like John Reid and Tony Blair from wittering on about Derogating from the ECHR, denying the right of habeas corpus etc. to us all, simply due their own incompetence in handling half a dozen peripheral terrorist suspects, who have not posed any real threat to the security of the UK, even when they have absconded from their inept Control Order scheme.
Gordon Brown is at least as much to blame for this as any other Labour cabinet Minister.
Posted by: wtwu | June 24, 2007 8:55 PM