Do we need a UK Bill of Rights?

By Suleman Nagdi MBE DL – Federation of Muslim Organisations

We welcome the decision to consult the Muslim community on the proposed introduction of a UK Bill of Rights. As the UK’s largest minority faith group with a population numbering between 1.57 and 2.2 million, we have particular concerns which the Bill of Rights may address. However, this does not negate an overall concern for the rights and welfare of all British citizens, regardless of their beliefs, ethnicity, colour or gender.

In a democratic society, justice demands a proper and measured response in strict accordance with rules of law which have been established over time and following centuries of experience and formulation. Our laws should afford every citizen trust and confidence in the system. Security is of paramount importance in order to preserve our rule of law and the fabric of our society. Equally as essential is the need to uphold civil liberties regardless of the circumstances and the crime in question, as this is the hallmark of our society. One does not exclude the other, and both are necessary for the future success of Britain.

Deportations

It is our understanding that a proposed Bill of Rights seeks to rectify some of the perceived shortcomings within the Human Rights Act.  The main ‘interference’ Prime Minister David Cameron wants freedom from is the prohibition on deporting foreign nationals to countries where there is a real risk they will be tortured. He has declared this to be the main purpose of repealing the Human Rights Act.  This gives rise to a genuine concern from British Muslims at a human level, as I’m sure it does for many others in Britain. Numerous United Nations Conventions were drafted in 1948 following the horrors of a war which almost engulfed the entire globe, with a single purpose of creating a set of minimum standards by which all human beings can expect to be treated. Their right to life and freedom from torture is a basic and fundamental right which all nations’ agreed would be protected. All regional human rights charters across the globe reflect this, as does the European Convention on which the Human Rights Act was modelled. We cannot allow our current Prime Minister to act on a political whim in order to appear hard on immigration, to erode this right. It is something we should be protecting with greater fervour as time goes on and conflicts escalate, and it is certainly not something we should negotiate away.

We must contextualise a potential UK Bill of Rights within the framework of wider International Human Rights law so that the provisions which were established over 6 decades ago are not breached. In Britain we have been saved from the scourges of war, conflict and autocratic and tyrannical regimes which are an everyday reality for millions if not billions around the globe. However, we cannot allow this to create apathy in our society for the real torment and persecution people may face if we remove an obligation not to deport nationals to countries where they may face torture.

The Muslim Community

Another issue of particular concern to British Muslims is shortcomings in a potential Bill of Rights reflecting the same deficiencies found within the Human Rights Act which fails to adequately protect the human rights of the Muslim community where faith based crimes are concerned.

In order to build the confidence of the community, it is vital that legislation is applied consistently and without prejudice across all faith and race groups. If we are to build confidence within the Muslim community, it is critical that Muslims are not marginalised and targeted unfairly.

We welcome laws that deal with hate crimes such as anti-Semitism but are concerned at the inconsistent application of the law. There is no legislation at present which addressed Islamophobia in its own right, despite the plethora of research in existence which substantiates its existence within British society at every level, including in politics, the media and even on the streets. There is clear and independent evidence showing that Muslims are unfairly targeted in several ways:

- Through anti-terror legislation which focuses disproportionately on potential threats from the Muslim community and in doing so dangerously downplays threats from other sections of the community in particular from the Far Right.

- The use of Schedule 7 powers at ports of entry for stop and search still remains the greatest negative experience for Muslims, even more so when the Freedom of Information Act states that Asians and those that look like Muslims are 32 times more likely to be stopped. This is viewed as religious and/or race profiling with no evidence provided that it helps advance security interests.

Legislation

A UK Bill of Rights must tackle the inherent weakness of the Race Relations Act of 1976 which only gives protection to Jews and Sikhs as racial groups while excluding Muslims from its definition. This policy is wholly inadequate and leaves British Muslims vulnerable to religious hate crimes, which are on the rise. This policy is even more obtuse in light of the fact that the governmental, media and other sources continuously refer to Muslims as a distinctive community.

The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 has also failed in protecting Islam from the many far right groups like the BNP and EDL.

Such points as the ones outlined above are fundamental when considering the need to introduce a UK Bill of Rights. A Bill of Rights can provide a unifying force in a diverse society, but it will not do so if it ignores the contribution of many countries, and most cultures, to the human rights values recognised throughout the world today and turns its back on the international Human Rights treaties which virtually every modern Bill of Rights is based on.  Furthermore, a UK Bill of Rights must be all encompassing applying universally to all four component countries of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales so as to ensure universal consistency.

Race against educational proposals

Source: Institute of Race Relations

By Jenny Bourne

This special issue of Race Equality Teaching (RET), an equality impact assessment of the Con-Dem government’s educational programme, unpicks exactly what is in store for the nation.

On the one hand is the 2010 white paper entitled The Importance of Teaching and the education bill, on the other hand is Theresa May’s supposed commitment to upholding the principle of equality. Yet, never the twain shall meet. ‘Response to The Importance of Teaching and the Education Bill 2011′ ‘is a concerted effort by a team from [the RET] Editorial Board to put before the Secretary of State and his ministers the evidence that their plans will do little good and, especially for the least advantaged, enormous harm.’

Equality impact assessment?

Robin Richardson shows how the Department of Education has either disregarded or paid a shallow lip-service to matters relating to equality impact assessments. The most obvious disregard was in the cancellation of the building schools for the future programme – which will obviously affect many pupils from BME backgrounds. And he provides a series of points of error or weakness that can, hopefully, be picked up by local authorities and others who are struggling against central government plans.

On raising attainment

David Gilborn tears apart the government’s programmes for meeting its stated purpose of raising attainment for all children and closing the gap between the richest and the poorest. First there are the cuts. And yet there is money to form all those new academy schools. And he provides chapter and verse, stats and graphs to show that academies are unlikely to benefit black pupils achievement-wise and they will actually be at risk to more permanent exclusions. There are higher rates of exclusion for all pupils in academies and, he warns, the right of reinstatement following an appeal against exclusion is due to be removed. Government reforms, he concludes ’seem likely to have considerable negative impacts that will further entrench existing inequalities by social class and race. The extension of academy status carries numerous threats but the most immediate is that a group of schools known to be less diverse and more middle class than the average are set to benefit from enhanced funding at a time when state education budgets are being reduced elsewhere.’

Don’t mention race

Sally Tomlinson is equally scathing. She shows that both the Con-Dem white paper and New Labour’s first white paper in 1997 had similar stated aims and input from the same man, Michael Barber. The differences now are that there will be less focus on targets and micro-management and more structural change, along the lines of academies and free schools (which were of course first introduced in the Blair years). She goes on to highlight the fact that now there is nothing in the current white paper on respect for others and appreciating other cultures and backgrounds. Race and ethnicity, she says, are mentioned minimally in the bill but form an important covert subtext. A major section of the white paper translated into Part 2 of the bill is devoted to discipline and much comment, she writes, is directed at black and other minority students. Teachers already have powers to search for weapons, drugs and stolen goods and new legislation extends those powers and suggests new areas in which teachers should be empowered to check on pupils out of school. Powers of head teachers to exclude disruptive pupils are to be extended and new arrangements put in place for alternative education – ‘in effect an extended sub-system of mainstream schooling’. She envisages private providers entering a market place of free schools for the disruptive and Pupil Referral Units turned academies. The increase in academy schools and free schools will run against any notion of community cohesion by intensifying divisions by faith, class and community.

Free for whom?

Ros Garside argues that the curriculum suggested in the 2010 white paper is elitist and does not indicate any understanding of the process of learning. It ‘harks back to … rote learning and facts that may have no resonance for learners’. Bruce Gill and Feyisa Demie question whether in terms of accountability the white paper has anything much to offer that is new. Rosemary Campbell-Stephens points to the irony that the free schools movement in the UK, though modelled on African American and Hispanic schools in the US, is essentially a white movement. Though the rational might be to tackle inequality, those who have been most disenfranchised in the UK are systematically being excluded from discussions. ‘It appears to be the preserve of well-organised white middle class groups, and certain predominantly Asian communities.’ Berenice Miles, contrasting a report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission with government proposals, argues for the need to prevent and respond to racial bullying and the needs of minority children. This means more support for children and schools rather than more top-down sanctions and more exclusions. Children from African, Caribbean, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller backgrounds will suffer.

Fighting the cuts

Bill Bolloten comments on two of the ‘unkindest cuts of all’ – the removal of financial support for English classes for speakers of other languages (ESOL) and the proposed withdrawal of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) which, though currently worth only between £10 and £30 per week, allows some of the most poor young people aged 16-19 to stay in education. Both of these cuts are politically charged. Forty-three per cent of all those 17-18 year-olds in fulltime education in 2008 received EMA, but this was true of 64 per cent of Black Caribbean and 88 per cent of Bangladeshi students. There is absolutely no doubt that this is a disincentive now for such young people from the poorest families in the most marginalised communities to better themselves. The Save EMA (http://saveema.co.uk/) Campaign and others are mounting a legal challenge on Gove’s decision: two-year contracts with students to receive EMA have been breached by the government.

What an irony. Cameron, in his denunciation of multiculturalism at Munich and recent warning about ‘disjointedness in some nieghbourhoods’, calls on immigrants to speak English and fall in with British values. At the same time an essential public service – funded English classes which can help people fit in by getting access to work and training – is being massively cut. This appears to be in line with the government’s kow-towing to the anti-immigrant, anti-asylum seeker chant of the tabloids. For ESOL will be available to ’settled communities’. No equality impact assessment has been carried out by the government on this policy decision. A campaign to defend ESOL (http://actionforesol.org/), including asylum groups and teachers’ unions has been launched.

This edition of Race Equality Teaching lays out the facts – bare and stark. But in its interstices lie a number of unarticulated issues and unanswered questions. Today, when state provision is being systematically and strategically undermined and chunks of provision handed over to the private sector, the struggles have of necessity to be changed. How can equality be high up on an agenda which is now about private profit? How can racism and structural issues of discrimination be addressed when the political discourse is against multiculturalism and for blaming familial culture for undermining society’s cohesion? How can education’s role in social mobility be maintained when a third of society is, through the market state, to be locked away in the ghettos? At a time of recession and acute cuts, how can one prevent the further marginalisation and penalisation of the poor and powerless in which BME communities are over-represented?

What this issue of Race Equality Teaching (Volume 29 number 2, Spring 2011) reveals is the crying need to campaign now, and all on fronts against the education proposals, before yet another generation of young people is failed and thrown on the scrap heap. And it points up exactly where and how everyone in education – lecturers, teachers, governors, parents, pupils, trade unionists, local authority officials and councillors – can take up the struggle. More, it sketches the range of issues which unites students from asylum-seeker, Gypsy and Traveller, African Caribbean, African, Asian and poor white families. Imagine the strength if all those campaigns got off the ground and came together in a community of interests. That would be community cohesion indeed.

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FOOTNOTE

Race Equality Teaching, ‘Response to The Importance of Teaching and the Education Bill 2011′, (Volume 29 number 2, Spring 2011) can be purchased here (http://www.trentham-books.co.uk/acatalog/Race_Equality_Teaching.html).

HAT News is precluded from expressing a corporate view: any opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.

Queen’s speech 2009: draft immigration bill

By Alan Travis

This 243-page bill was published last week and sets out sweeping reforms to the immigration and asylum system that Labour would enact if they win next year’s general election, as well as consolidating and “simplifying” the 12 major pieces of legislation since the 1971 Immigration Act.

The main reforms include a new concept of temporary, time-limited “permission” to come to Britain, which will replace the five separate categories of those who come to work, study, or visit. Permanent residents will be given permission without any time limits or conditions attached.

It also introduces a new streamlined power of expulsion to replace the current powers of deportation and removal. A new regime for those on immigration bail is to be introduced with restrictions on residence, work, study and access to public funds backed up by reporting and monitoring requirements.

A consultation paper published last week on the future of welfare support for asylum seekers is also expected to lead to measures to encourage those who have no right to be in the country to leave Britain.

Another year, another immigration Bill

Source : Poliblog-Refugee Council

Yet another immigration Bill, the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill, is making its way through Parliament at the moment bringing us up to a whopping total of 8 immigration bills since 1997!  The Government has been working on a simplification project over the past couple of years, trying to codify and simplify all immigration law, but they are running behind schedule and have put forward a Bill containing issues that they consider to be ‘urgent’ before this larger Bill is introduced in October.

However, very few of the issues in this current Bill are urgent.  There are many more pressing issues that the government should be addressing – the plight of destitute asylum seekers, the restrictions on permission to work, the lack of protection safeguards in our borders, the discriminatory voucher system… the list goes on.

The one urgent thing that the Bill does do (and about time too!) is introduce a duty on UKBA staff to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, as is the case for staff working for all other government departments.  Supportive Peers are working hard to convince the government that this should also apply to UKBA staff based overseas, and are probing the Government to find how children’s lives will be improved in practice.

We have many serious concerns about the rest of the Bill.  Our main one is that the Bill is introducing a ‘probationary citizenship’ period as part of a person’s route to citizenship which will increase the time they have to wait to apply for citizenship from 5 years to 6 to 8 years depending on whether they engage in voluntary activity.  Refugees have come to the UK for protection and so should be given permanent residence as soon as they are granted status so they can rebuild their lives in peace and security.  We believe that these extra hurdles being placed in a refugees’ path to citizenship are unnecessary, unfair and unduly harsh, and many supportive Peers are making sure our views are heard in Parliament.

You can read our full Bill Briefing here.

Coroners and Justice Bill

IRR - Some provisions in this vast, unwieldy Bill threaten to undermine still further civil rights and protections, particularly for victims of state violence.

The Coroners and Justice Bill, which had its second reading in the House of Commons on 26 January 2009, is a massive hotchpotch which deals with child pornography, defences to homicide charges and other miscellaneous criminal justice matters as well as with inquests. It attempts to put the law of inquests into modern statutory reform, and for that it has been welcomed by campaigning groups such as INQUEST. But its clauses on secret inquests and on sharing personal information have sparked grave concern, as these proposals perfectly illustrate the drift into a surveillance society in which government officials are entitled to collect and share any and all personal information on us, while shrouding their own operations in secrecy in a policing state.[1]

Secret inquests

Clause 11 of the Bill seeks to reintroduce plans for secret inquests, first proposed in the Counter-Terrorism Bill and thrown out in October 2008 by the House of Lords. It provides that the Secretary of State may certify an investigation into a person’s death, on grounds of national security, diplomatic relations, for the prevention or detection of crime, to protect the safety of a witness or third party, or on general public interest grounds. The effect of certification is to allow a coroner (who, in a ‘certified’ inquest, would have to be a High Court judge) to hold the inquest without a jury and to exclude parties (including family members of the deceased) from hearing the secret evidence.

The coroner would have the power to appoint ‘independent counsel’ (who is clearly not independent, as he or she is appointed by the coroner) to test the secret evidence so as to protect the interests of the deceased and next of kin. A similar system in ‘control order’ cases and in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, where courts rely on secret evidence to justify deportation to torture states or intolerable restrictions on liberty, has led to huge frustration and constant litigation, and prominent QCs have condemned the special advocate system as legitimising unaccountable and oppressive executive decisions.

Azelle Rodney’s death

Currently, inquests must be held with a jury if a death occurred in prison, police or other state custody, or where death resulted from an injury caused by a police officer on duty. The reluctance of the government to disclose sensitive material has caused massive delays to inquests such as that of Azelle Rodney, who died after being shot six times by armed police in Edgware, north London on 30 April 2005. In August 2007, coroner Andrew Walker, sitting at Hornsey in north London, announced he could not proceed with a full inquest into Mr Rodney’s death because of a large number of redactions – passages crossed out – in police officers’ statements. The redactions were made under the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which covers information obtained from covert surveillance devices such as telephone tapping or bugs. The proposals would enable intercept evidence to be heard by the coroner – but not by the next of kin or the public.

Speaking in December 2007, Azelle’s mother Susan Alexander expressed her belief that the planned changes would enable her finally to see all the evidence collected by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). She said: ‘For a long time now I’ve been very frustrated and upset by not being able to see vital evidence about the police shooting of my son … Now that the government agrees that this evidence shouldn’t be withheld from bereaved families like ours, I hope all concerned can act quickly so the evidence is disclosed with minimum delay. None of Azelle’s friends and family can come to terms with his death until everything is out in the open and a full inquest has taken place. Azelle has not had justice and without justice there can be no accountability.’[2] Following the Privy Council’s recommendation in February 2008 that RIPA’s absolute ban on intercept evidence be abolished, and the prime minister’s apparent support for their recommendation, there were grounds for optimism that a more open approach to intercept evidence was on the way. These hopes, so far as inquests are concerned, have been dashed. It does not appear that Azelle’s family will be any the wiser about his death under this Bill – the likelihood is that they, and the public, will be excluded from the inquest, which will be held without a jury. As INQUEST pointed out in its April 2008 briefing on the similar provisions in the Counter-Terrorism Bill: ‘Deaths in custody raise important issues of state power and accountability. In a free and democratic society, deaths in state custody should be subject to particularly close public scrutiny. For this reason it is imperative the inquest system is open and transparent so that justice is seen to be done and public confidence in state bodies is upheld … [the] Clause would give the Secretary of State a key decision making role in the very inquests where the state’s actions require most scrutiny and amounts to excessive political interference in the inquest system.’

Its briefing on the 2009 Bill is even more trenchant, arguing that ‘The proposals amount to a fundamental attack on the independence and transparency of the coronial system in England and Wales; are fundamentally flawed; disconnected from legal principles and have come about without any consultation.’

A further matter of concern is the omission from the Bill of any provision for regular funding of families’ representation at inquests involving deaths in custody. Currently, funding is available only on an exceptional basis, which, as INQUEST points out, means lengthy and frequently intrusive investigations into the means of bereaved families, adding to their distress and grief. The funding gap leads to gross inequality, as police, prison officers and other state officials have banks of expensive lawyers to protect them at inquests and to seek to deflect blame on to the deceased. It also breaches the government’s obligations under European human rights law to ensure that bereaved families have a full opportunity to participate in investigations into deaths at the hands of the state.

Investigation and witness anonymity orders

Another matter of concern arises from the Bill’s provisions for ‘investigating anonymity orders’ and ‘witness anonymity orders’ for those with information useful to police relating to gun and knife crimes in the context of street gangs. These provisions will give police and prosecutors the right to apply to a court for the identity of key witnesses to be kept secret throughout that person’s entire life. Any breach will be punishable by up to five years in jail. The clause is the government’s response to a House of Lords judgment in June 2008 quashing a conviction where the witnesses were anonymous. Justice minister Maria Eagle said she hoped witnesses would feel able to give evidence as a result of the changes. But as the House of Lords acknowledged, in upholding the importance of the common law right to confront one’s accusers, where evidence is received under a ‘veil of secrecy’, the door is left ‘wide open to mendacity, falsehood, and partiality’. The grant of permanent anonymity to informants raises the spectre of wrongful convictions on anonymous evidence motivated by spite or by racism.

Big brother

Clause 152 of the Bill seeks to remove all limits on the use of personal information – including medical, financial and employment records, communications data, by officials. The clause would amend the Data Protection Act so as to allow ministers to make ‘Information sharing orders’ enabling sharing with other agencies and use of information for purposes other than the original one, if this serves a ‘relevant policy objective’. As campaigning group NO2ID says, the clause blows a hole in the data protection legislation. It would permit data swapping between government and the private sector, and with foreign governments. Everything recorded anywhere would potentially be accessible to any official body. In the words of NO2ID, ‘This single clause is as grave a threat to privacy as the entire ID Scheme.’ The clause has been condemned by, among others, the British Medical Association, which say that the data-sharing provisions could deter patients from seeing doctors, GeneWatch, Liberty and the British Computer Society, and is likely to be mauled by the House of Lords, whose Constitution Committee recently expressed concern over the growth of the surveillance society.

Migrants to wait for ten years for Citizenship

(Workpermit.com- Additional Reporting by Elisha Shamba) – Immigrants in Britain now might have to wait for 10 years before they can apply for citizenship with the UK government proposing new tests and a longer probationary period.

The proposals, which were introduced in parliament and expected to be implemented from late 2009, include a new ‘immigration tax’ to help finance the extra pressure that immigrants put on services such as health and education.

However the left-leaning Institute for Public Research yesterday maintained that tough rules on who is allowed to work in the UK will damage the country’s economic recovery.
The economic downturn could be longer and deeper,the think tank said.

Placing restrictions on migrants who plug skills gaps or take jobs which Britons will not perform will damage the economy, researchers said.

The Immigration and Citizenship Bill will end the automatic right to stay after five years’ residence and replace it with “earned citizenship”.

Migrants who can demonstrate a knowledge of English and life in the UK and who carry out voluntary work will have their timetable for citizenship speeded up. The Bill will also place restrictions on migrants’ access to benefits and housing.

Tim Finch, head of the IPPR’s migration team, said: “Migrants become easy targets at times of economic difficulty but introducing yet more tough measures to exclude people could damage our prospects for economic recovery. As it stands, the Borders, Immigration and Citizenship Bill could deter migrants who are in high demand and who are essential for our economy.

“Not all migrants will want to settle in the UK, but some will and so it’s important that the over-complicated process of “earned citizenship” is made more clear and fair.”

He called for a “clear” and “flexible” system for earned citizenship and said it could be unfair to deny benefits to migrants who are working and paying taxes.

IPPR said that the bill needs to address the following issues:

Flexibility: The proposals on so-called “earned citizenship”, along with the new tighter points-based system of managed migration, must be sufficiently flexible to ensure that the UK’s long-term economic need for migrants is met.

Clarity: It is unclear what migrants will be required to do to “earn” citizenship during the so called “probationary period”. To ensure the system is transparent and fair it needs to be clear what contributions to British life are to be considered, how they will be judged and by who.

Fairness: As-yet unspecified restrictions are proposed on migrants’ access to benefits and social housing. However, migrants who have not achieved full citizenship may still be contributing a great deal to the country, and may have raised their families here. Is it fair in these circumstances to deny them a welfare.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The points system will make sure that where we need foreign workers to fill gaps, we can get them. Its flexibility means that we can raise or lower the bar according to the needs of the labour market and the country as a whole. By demanding migrants earn their right to be here, we will ensure only those who make a contribution to Britain can stay in the country.”

Immigration and Citizenship

In 2007, the Government published a consultation document outlining how it proposed to approach the simplification of immigration law.

The document stated that Government would review the content and role of primary legislation, of the Immigration Rules and of the asylum policy instructions and guidance.

On July 14th 2008, the Draft (partial) Immigration and Citizenship Bill was published.

The Refugee Council is concerned that it is only a partial Bill with significant areas such as entitlement to asylum support currently missing from the draft and that it represents a series of missed opportunities, in particular that refugees should be given indefinite permission to remain in the UK the moment that they are recognised as refugees.

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