Mission to protect our rights in a brave new world
MANY people have expressed surprise at awaking to discover voters had decided the UK should leave the EU. Judith Robertson wasn’t one of them.
“To be honest I wasn’t shocked,” she says. “I was seriously disappointed, but you could see how it was playing out with support for groups like Ukip, and people not feeling engaged or part of Europe.”
Walking away is not something she’ d have chosen to do, she adds. “For all its faults – significant faults – the collaboration and relationship between governments at that level is something we’d welcome.” But she understands the concerns, particularly from people and communities for whom the economic outlook is poor.
As the second chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission – she took over from Professor Alan Miller earlier this year – Robertson has a key interest and a responsibility to promote awareness of and respect for human rights. There are similarities between the suspicion many people have for the EU the scepticism about treaties like the European Convention on Human Rights. Both are seen as remote, detached from the concerns of ordinary people.
The biggest task Robertson has, it seems to me, is to communicate the real benefits of human rights to the man in the street. It’s a vexed topic, which can seem at the same time too dry and technical for many people to connect with, while lending itself to simplistic and misleading interpretations, which have led to hostility. But Robertson, the former head of Oxfam Scotland and ex-director of the See Me campaign to end mental health stigma, has plenty of experience of communicating such issues.
She has the kind of plainspeaking approach necessary to counter the myths about human rights, such as the perception they help migrants avoid deportation and claim benefits or have enabled prisoners to demand gay porn and heroin (Richard Littlejohn made this claim in the Daily Mail without qualification – the paper later apologised for the “joke”).
Public cynicism about human rights is fed by such stories, but Robertson says it is not true they seldom benefit ordinary people. She highlights the example of the Hillsborough families, arguing human rights laws were significant in enabling them to finally establish the truth about police actions and errors. “It was the same in Rotherham, with the young girls whose rights to a childhood, to be safe and supported and looked after were completely destroyed.”
Yet talk of developing a “human rights culture” in Scotland is meaningless to most people, I suggest. She responds: “I was asked about that a lot when I was at See Me. Fundamentally what it means is that people have autonomy, and can contribute to decision making that affects their lives, rather than government structures deciding what is good for people. At times we are a long way from that.”
Here in Scotland, we’ve come a long way in some areas, such as care, she says. Government, councils, charities, health boards, all declare they work on a rights-respecting model. But practices on the ground don’t always deliver on the principles set out in laws and guidelines.
“People have their rights breached all the time. That could be as basic as making a decision about someone’s care without consulting them. It sounds heavyhanded, talking about rights breached, but that’s the reality.”
In some cases we do it appallingly, she says, such as the UK Government’s lack of consultation with those affected by welfare reform, based on a prejudice that poverty is driven by lifestyle choices. “Was the intent to help people access their rights? Or to cut budgets?”
The concept of rights can be a real help to people, Robertson argues. “At See Me, as we started to introduce people to the language of rights, they started to use it in real situations, when they were at their most vulnerable. It gives people strength to know, ‘I can ask for this. It isn’t just me – this is something afforded me by an international convention’.
“That sounds grandiose but I’ve seen people have that conversation and it has changed the dynamic in a room. The more people understand their rights, the more that will happen.”
Under her predecessor, there has been considerable progress. Scotland has a child abuse inquiry – albeit currently rather troubled – which the SHRC has been involved in establishing.
Professor Miller launched the Scottish National Action Plan on Human Rights, Snap, which is endorsed by the Scottish Government. Nicola Sturgeon is looking at how the European Convention on Economic and Cultural Rights can be incorporated into Scottish law.
But given to avoid paying lip service to the rights of minority groups we need tougher rules, and accountability for public bodies, Robertson says: “We have to be responsible enough to hold ourselves to account as a society for what goes wrong, it needs to be built in.”
She’s been around long enough, she says, to observe the way government introduces laws that are strong, but subsequently weaken the bit which allows it to been forced .“If people know they are going to be accountable, they try harder to get it right. That doesn’t have to equal scapegoating people. If things go wrong and your choice is between denial or being sacked, that doesn’t seem like a reasonable operating choice.”
She mentions the failure of a number of agencies to investigate the abuse of vulnerable girls in Rotherham again: “How do we pay attention to what people say, investigate and be prepared to gather the evidence to find out what is truly going on?”
After a low-key start, much of her tenure as chairwoman seems likely to be concerned with recent political upheavals and what they might mean for human rights. Pulling out of Europe shouldn’t mean a loss of much of the progress made under the European Convention of Human Rights. Many key rights are now enshrined in UK law.
But of equal concern is the Conservative manifesto pledge to scrap the Human Rights Act (HRA), and human rights activists have spent the last few days studying the record of the new Cabinet to read the runes over this issue.
There have been discussions about the complexities of possible repeal in devolved nations, with the HRA’s provisions forming part of the Scotland Act and tied in even more closely to the Good Friday Agreement. “Certainly we don’t want it repealed, “Robertson says. “The Human Rights Act is supported by the Scottish Government and the Parliament, and by civil society as well.”
Theresa May has a remarkably chequered record on this issue, having flip-flopped several times in the run up to the EU referendum and subsequent Tory leadership contest. She notoriously warned human rights had reached a point where “we all know the stories” citing what later turned out to be a highly distorted media tale of an illegal immigrant who couldn’t be deported because he had a pet cat.
As recently as April she was arguing the UK should remain in the EU but leave the European Convention on Human Rights. But when she launched her bid for the Tory leadership she retreated. Without enough support at Parliament for pulling out of ECHR, she wouldn’t pursue it, she said.
That’s a conversion Judith Robertson welcomes. “It no longer looks as if we are talking about a full-scale abandonment of the rights framework.”
But there will be a continued need for vigilance. She and the UK’s other human rights commissioners expect the UK and Scottish governments to continue the progressive realisation of human rights. “We need that, particularly for people who are left behind, who benefit least from the economic models we operate under.
“We need to address the right to a decent standard of living, in a context of widespread inequality. That applies to the Scottish Government as much as Westminster.”