Yesterday the Telegraph published a self serving letter from the President of the Law Society a position that equates to that of a trade union boss. In it he burbled on about his fears over the Conservative proposal to replace the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights. He wrote '....the Law Society has consistently questioned the necessity of a Bill of Rights and has stressed the importance of the Human Rights Act and the need to promote it not replace it'
He ended his letter with this supremely arrogant sentence;
"Human Rights belong to us; they are not within the gift of the government"
Yes that's what he wrote - showing a complete contempt for the democratic process. I said earlier that the position of President of the Law Society equated with that of a trade union boss perhaps what I should have added was a trade union boss from the 1960's/70's i.e. one who had a contempt for the general public and for the will of the people.
The Human Rights Act is a disaster for everyone but the lawyers who are milking it via Legal Aid for hundreds of millions of pounds. No wonder the Solicitors leader is so worried about it's abolition. Virtually any day of the week you open a newspaper and read of a judgement which seems to be without a iota of common sense. So on the day his letter was published there was an item about a foreign doctor wanted in America for child rape. The court ruled that his 'right to liberty and security' under the Human Rights Act was at threat if he was extradited. Wow - what a surprise. Yes if you go round raping children and get caught your 'right to liberty' is -one would have thought - at risk and so it should be.
Today I open my newspaper and find yet another moronic judge, Mr Justice Gilbart- has ruled that Mr Pickles policy, bought in to stop gipsies repeating the Dale Farm fiasco,had breached the Equality Act and -you've got - the Human Rights Act.
This country is a Democracy - something the legal profession and the Judiciary seem to have forgotten. In their arrogance and in their desire to line their own pockets at our expense they feel they should be above the will of the people. Exactly like the trade union bosses of yesteryear. In his determination to abolish the Human Rights Act David Cameron should have every thinking persons support - and when lawyers like Andrew Caplen,President of the Law Society squeal - just remember who is profiting from the Human Rights Act - his members.
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Thursday, 22 January 2015
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- Francis Fulford
- Francis Fulford is a writer, broadcaster and television personality. He lives at Great Fulford, a beautiful country estate in Devon that has been the home of the Fulford family since around 1190.
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Francis, it's not so much whether you have rights because of a statute in parliament, or just by being human.. the tradition from Magna Carta has them as inalienable, Utilitarians have them as given by the state.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is how elaborately you define them and balance them - like the right to family life is a plausible kind of thing, but held above freedom from terrorist attack, or maybe freedom from indoctrination, maybe it's a problem. If you dole out lots of rights in fine-grained detail you get all manner of conflicts, so you need to be utilitarian when making judgments - so you need to know what people's utility you're weighing up - ie you need Borders. Obviously lawyers aren't trained to decide utility - that's up to voters - but they're onto a gold mine picking apart all the interactions.
It's the same thing with all the idealistic EU lawmaking - like start with a sacrosanct 'no obstruction to free movement' and you get all manner of unforeseen consequences.