UN meddlers to lecture us on prisoner voting ban
MINISTERS are braced for another round of ‘ human rights lecturing’ from the United Nations.
A report published today is expected to criticise the UK’s prisoner vote ban, the treatment of gipsies and the use of surveillance powers, among other issues.
But the UN human rights committee will face immediate accusations of hypocrisy, as its members include representatives of countries with appalling human rights records.
The 18-strong committee, which is chaired by Argentine Fabian Salvioli, is made up of members from countries including Egypt, Uganda and Algeria.
Among the issues their report is expected to criticise is Britain’s long- standing ban – endorsed recently by Parliament – on prisoner voting.
The committee will also focus on claims of discrimination against gipsies and traveller communities, and the representation of women in the upper levels of the judiciary.
It will also examine claims that the definition of terrorism in English law is too broad, and that the age of criminal responsibility is too low. The report will look at stop-andsearch powers used by the police, which have recently been pared back by ministers.
Most contentiously, it will report on controversial criticisms of surveillance powers used by the security and intelligence agencies that were made public in material stolen by ex- CIA employee Edward Snowden.
Security chiefs say the episode has done lasting damage to Britain’s effort to defeat terrorism, and ministers are gearing up to grant new powers so they can better track extremists and criminals online. Mr Salvioli, the director of Argentina’s Human Rights Institute, has written that Britain’s military victory in the Falkland’s war ‘doesn’t give any political rights to fix limits or decide over sovereignty’.
Last night Tory MP Henry Smith said: ‘Having just celebrated the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta we don’t need lecturing on a proud tradition of human rights in this country – indeed we played a leading role in drafting the original European Convention, in the wake of the horrors of the concentration camps of Nazism and the gulags of Communism.
‘We certainly don’t need to be told to give prisoners the right to vote when there are real and greater injustices being perpetrated round the world.’
It is only the latest broadside from the UN against Britain’s human rights record, which is widely seen as among the best in the world.
In 2011, professor Yves Cabannes, the UN adviser on forced evictions, visited Dale Farm in Essex, where Europe’s largest illegal travellers site was located, to accuse the local council of breaking human rights.
Two years later, Raquel Rolnik, the UN housing rapporteur – who dabbled in witchcraft – was dubbed the ‘Brazil nut’ after she demanded the Coalition’s shake-up of housing benefit be axed, including the spare room subsidy.
Earlier this year Francois Crepeau, the special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants said Britain risks taking the path of Nazi Germany if the Tories pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Also this year Peter Sutherland, the special representative of the secretary- general for international migration, said Britain should be taking in a fairer share of Mediterranean refugees.
‘We don’t need to be told’