A Human Rights Bill for Scotland: submission to a consultation

The Scottish government is consulting about the introduction of a Scottish bill to incorporate human rights law into Scottish legislation.  The exercise is somewhat limited by the terms of the devolution settlement, which largely reserves ‘equal opportunities’ to Westminster – it’s in schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998 , but there are other things that the Scottish Parliament could do.

I’ve responded to some of the questions, and I am duplicating my response in the passages that follow.

1 What are your views on our proposal to allow for dignity to be considered by courts in interpreting the rights in the Bill?

‘Dignity’ is subject to interpretation. Nordenfeldt, in an article on “The varieties of dignity” (Health Care Analysis, 12(2) 2004), identifies four different meanings: dignity as merit, as moral stature, as identity, and as human worth. Only the fourth of these is universal. The former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sachs, claimed a fifth: the ‘Dignity of Difference’, arguing for a view of dignity that was both collective and cultural.

The incorporation of the principle of ‘dignity’ is unlikely to have the legal effect that the Scottish Government desires. A recent judgment in the European Court of Human Rights upheld the right of a Roma woman to beg, on the basis that the right to beg was an expression of her dignity (ECHR 2021, Lacatas v Switzerland, 14065/15) – but the right to have enough resources not to beg was not protected.

3 What are your views on the types of international law, materials and mechanisms to be included within the proposed interpretative provision?

The Human Rights protected by international law are intended to establish a universal minimum. Equalities, social protection, economic rights, social rights, public sector duties and access to justice are not really part of that. They are, rather, rights of citizenship, going well beyond the limited aspirations of human rights.

Laws that focus specifically on Human Rights have had at most a limited effect on the operation of the law in the UK. According to solicitors Mishcon de Reya (Submission to IHRAR’s Call for Evidence, 2021), Human Rights were cited in 538 legal cases from 2000 to 2021: the courts made a Declaration of Incompatibility in only 39 of those cases, and 8 of those were overturned on appeal. (The main impacts in those very few cases have related to immigration and mental health issues.) The Scottish Government cannot rely on the incorporation of Human Rights law to address the broad range of problems identified in this consultation.

5 Are there any rights in the equality treaties which you think should be treated differently?

The Scottish Government is legally limited in what it can do for protected groups, because that would be liable to violate the reservations of the Scotland Act, but it can pursue equality more meaningfully by other routes. The Child Poverty Strategy is an example.

12 Given that the Human Rights Act 1998 is protected from modification under the Scotland Act 1998, how do you think we can best signal that the Human Rights Act (and civil and political rights) form a core pillar of human rights law in Scotland?

The Human Rights Act 1998 only committed governments and their successors to uphold the minimum standards established in international law. This is a floor, not a pillar.

15 How do you think we should define the groups to be protected by the equality provision?

The protected characteristics identified in the Equality Act 2010 leave gaps and ambiguities. The many gaps include, for example, national origin, locality, social class, accent, inequalities of birth, fortune and discrimination through favoritism. The Scottish Government may not have the competence to amend the Equality Act, but it can at least take action on these issues as they relate to the conduct of public policy in Scotland.

16 Do you agree or disagree that the use of ‘other status’ in the equality provision would sufficiently protect the rights of LGBTI and older people?

Disagree. Age, sexual orientation and gender reassignment are already protected in the Equality Act. It is difficult to see what difference further legal incorporation will make.

19 What is your view on who the duties in the Bill should apply to?

I support the principle that duties should apply to any body carrying out devolved public functions.

33 What are your views on our proposed approach to ‘standing’ under the Human Rights Bill?

The extension of ‘standing’ to permit persons with a ‘sufficient interest’ to initiate legal action is welcome. However, it still falls some way short of what is needed to protect economic, social and cultural rights.

In the USA, legal action takes two other forms not currently permissible in either England or Scotland:

● the use of class actions, extending beyond group litigation to people who are affected but not participants; and
● the presentation of a Brandeis brief, a rule of evidence which has been available in the USA for more than a century. The brief makes it possible for courts to consider non-legal submissions from social scientists, reviewing evidence of the overall economic or social impact of a case. Evidence in this form can be taken from amici curiae, persons or bodies not otherwise party to the action.

In so far as these are rules about due process in a court of law, introducing these measures would fall wholly within the competence of Scottish law-makers.

36. If you do not agree that existing judicial remedies are sufficient in delivering effective remedy for rightsholders, what additional remedies would help to do this?

There need to be routes permitting rapid, authoritative, low-cost access to legal redress. As things stand currently, judicial review of administrative action can only be granted when other measures have been explored and failed. This creates barriers to justice, and the process is simply too slow to protect people with limited resources. There have been rapid, urgent actions taken on behalf of some people, such as migrants facing illegal deportation, but there is no obvious equivalent route for people who have been left without money for food this week. For most, there is no effective way of  getting legal redress before the penalty, and the problems, have been suffered.

40 What are your views on our proposals for a Human Rights Scheme?

Impact assessments can act as a useful guide to administrative action, but in practice (for example, in relation to gender or the environment) there has been a tendency for some bodies to claim that there is nothing to consider when they have simply failed to see the implications. Assessments need to be reported, collated and subject to scrutiny in order to be effective in guiding practice.

 

For those who want to add their views, the full consultation, which closes on the 5th October, is available here.

 

 

 

 

The government embraces the Equality Act – in a way

While preparing to ease lockdown, the Prime Minister’s office has issued this threat, reported in the Guardian: ‘Businesses that chose to enforce mask-wearing would need to take legal advice on their responsibilities under the Equality Act, Downing Street said.’ It appears that ‘equality’ consists of exposing vulnerable people equally to the kinds of risk otherwise experienced by football supporters and anti-lockdown protests, and firms that decline to do this have to take legal advice to defend their actions.

Labour is found guilty of institutional racism

The Twitter-sphere is full of misinformation about the judgement of the Equality and Human Rights Commission about the Labour Party’s conduct towards Jews.  There are two rather serious misunderstandings doing the rounds.  The first is the mistaken claim that “the EHRC did not find that Labour was institutionally antisemitic”.  Here is an example, ‘liked’ by more than 1500 people :

 The EHRC report does not refer to ‘institutional racism’ at all.  However, the report does specifically and directly confine itself to actions which can be said to have been the responsibility of the Labour Party, as a collective organisation.   The methodology is explained in Annex 3.    It follows that report’s finding of unlawful conduct is, precisely, a finding against the Labour Party as an institution.  So yes, the Labour Party has been found guilty of institutional racism.

The second claim, as expressed by serial provocateur Chris Williamson, is based in a related misunderstanding: that “Despite cries about ‘institutional anti-Semitism’ and an ‘existential threat to British Jews’, the EHRC based its report on a tiny sample of 70 complaints made over a three-year period. It only found two examples of supposed ‘unlawful harassment’ – out of half a million members.”  The report did not look at the conduct of members (let alone that of former members such as Mr Williamson).    The actions of individuals, former members, and members communicating to other members in an individual capacity, were expressly excluded from the scope of the inquiry (p 127). What the EHRC was looking for was something different: actions which could legitimately be said to be conduct of the Labour Party, rather than of individuals.  And that is what the report has condemned.

I think there is some cause for regret here.  The report’s careful and measured tone doesn’t really get the point over to people who have convinced themselves, over a period of years, that the accusations of racism were fabricated – an allegation that is racist in itself.  There are references in the report to the suggestion that complaints about racism were ‘smears’ – that was a major part of the two examples of institutional harassment – but there is not the warning that was needed to explain to people that if they continued to maintain that position, it would amount to further harassment.  The EHRC needed to say it in terms.

 

Racism is about now, not the distant past

Boris Johnson has ‘announced’, if that’s no too grand a word for a bit of a burble in the pages of the Daily Telegraph, an inquiry into inequalities.  I’ve found it intensely depressing that a powerful moral argument about racism and police brutality has somehow been diverted into a discussion of public statues. The slave trader Edward Colston died in 1720, three hundred years ago.  The focus on people like him is a poor substitute for addressing the problems now.

The diversion from the real issues reflects, unfortunately, a failure among many people who think of themselves as anti-racist to focus on what matters.  The dominant narrative in the 1980s tried to link  the explanation for all racial problems in terms of a combination of slavery, colonialism and contemporary racism.  I hoped and thought the debates had moved on since then: it seems I was wrong. The same narrative makes sense only for particular ethnicities.  The narrative says a lot about the USA, and quite a lot about people who came to Britain from the Caribbean; but it overrides the experience of other disadvantaged groups, whose circumstances just  didn’t fit the same pattern.

The first set of issues concerns slavery.  The dehumanisation and brutality associated with slavery is often represented as something that is distinctive to colonialism, but it’s something that has been widely practised in a wide range of other circumstances.  In contemporary terms, the serfs and peasants of the middle ages were pretty much treated as slaves.  Various types of serfdom were practised in Europe over eight hundred years or more; serfs were still having to redeem themselves in Russia in the early 20th century .  Let me pick up, for instance, the example of the 1351 Statute of Labourers (one of the major causes of grievance in the peasants’ revolt, thirty years later) which stipulated that “every person, able in body and under the age of 60 years, not having enough to live upon, being required, shall be bound to serve him that doth require him, or else be committed to gaol until he shall find surety to serve.” This is not the same thing as a slave trade – land and property could not at that time be bought and sold.  But the staggering assumption at the root of this law was the assertion that everyone must have a master, and not having one constituted grounds for being taken and set to work. The lives of most people, in most places, were not their own.

Next, there is colonialism. A dogged Marxist might, I suppose, argue that it all boils down to money: empires work by extracting resources from one place and moving them to another.  However,  what money does depends on where it does it.  It seems painfully obvious that what colonialism or Empire meant in South America, India, Ireland, China and much of Africa was quite different.  The East India Company, a private concern, was based in trade leavened with piracy – it was not much like anything before or since. Slavery in the Spanish empire was characterised by degradation, inhuman treatment and chattel slavery, but it still didn’t look much like the system in the USA.  To my mind, the claim that any of this can be reduced to a common factor of ‘race’ disregards  the distinct history – and the pain – of people in the colonies and the conquered nations.

And then there is contemporary racism – what is happening now.  It’s clear enough that history plays a part in forming the condition and opportunities which shape the experience of disadvantage: the position of indigenous peoples, or the continued inequalities affecting people of Irish descent in the UK, are markers.  History matters, but it doesn’t matter that much. The kind of issue that should be exciting all our concern is not about a remote history. People who have some tenuous connection with foreign countries are being stripped of their rights.  The policy is, deliberately and explicitly, ‘hostile’.  Citizens are being expelled from their countries.    Migrants are left to drown.  People are being killed in the streets.

This is about the world as it is now, not as once it was.  This morning, David Lammy has been making a powerfully articulate case for government action about things that matter – among them,  policing, safeguarding people from minority groups and workplace discrimination.  We have loads of information, reports and recommendations for action.  Nothing is being done about them.

Institutional racism comes from ‘othering’, not just from hate. We need to recognise the dignity of difference.

Institutional racism has come, in Britain, to be understood as

the collective failure of an organisation to provide and appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin.

Those words come from the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.  The elements of institutional racism lie, not so much in the expression of direct or personal discrimination, as in the actions of institutions – acts, processes and the promotion of outcomes which are discriminatory.

Both the leading candidates in the electoral contest have been criticised,  with some reason, for making stereotypical or prejudiced comments about race.  Boris Johnson has made offensive comments about Muslims, women, homosexuality, Liverpudlians, Africans, ‘orientals’ and heaven knows what else.  Jeremy Corbyn is accused more often of condoning racism more than of making racist statements,  with the main exception of accusing Jews of not understanding British irony; but the racism he has appeared to wave aside includes accusations of conspiracy, divided loyalties, sinister influence and Holocaust denial.   I don’t think we can appeal for ‘zero tolerance’ of inappropriate comments, because – like going ‘back to basics’ in moral conduct – it asks more of us than we’re capable of living with.  Everyone has some prejudices,  even if we might hope that public figures would think twice before they gave vent to them.

We should be more directly concerned with about the levels of institutional racism that have been on display in both the Conservative and Labour parties.  Both parties have factions who want to deny that there is any problem.  Some right-wing commentators have  claimed that Islamophobia has been invented; Labour supporters often refer to ‘smears’ (itself a racist accusation, claiming that complaints are based on deliberate fabrication and conspiracy).  The Conservative leaders promised to hold an inquiry into anti-Muslim hatred, and have backtracked; Labour stands accused of  institutional racism and a toxic environment.  We need to understand the effect on institutions that is produced, not by racial hate as such, but by ‘Othering’ – painting minority groups, such as Jews or Muslims, as alien.  The damage is done not when we call people names, but when we accuse them of alien patterns of thought, divided loyalties, dishonesty and ulterior motives.  Those, rather than outright racial hatred, are the sentiments which lead to denial, rejection and the inability to deal with justified complaints.

 

A protest about women-only events: can’t there be safe spaces for women?

A stushie in Edinburgh, with accompanying Twitter storm, has exercised my nearest and dearest.  The Audacious Women Festival, as the name implies, might be assumed to have something to do with women: find their tweets at @awfest.  Some of the events are open to all, and some are single-sex events intended for women.  But the idea of a single-sex event has exercised a particular lobby, claiming to represent trans and non-binary people, who have called for a boycott.  Yesterday, Glasgow Women’s Library (@womenslibrary) pulled out of two single-sex workshops they were due to conduct, leaving sixty people without an event at 30 minutes’ notice. Edinburgh Rape Crisis (@EdinRapeCrisis) has pulled a book launch planned for Monday.  Reactions on Twitter have been mixed; it seems to me that more people have condemned the organisations than have supported them.

The offence that the Festival has caused is that the organisers have stuck to the policy on gender recognition advised by the Equality and Human Rights Commission: more or less, that they treat people as women when they present as women.   The call for a boycott was circulated by @ClassicsQueer, who holds that that policy excludes “our trans and nb sisters”. [“NB”, for those lost in acronyms, stands for non-binary.]   She attached a document saying this:

I would urge you particularly if you are a cis woman to boycott … A few weeks ago I reached out to them as I was concerned by the ‘women only’ rhetoric and was disappointed to find their response laden with transphobia.  I was told that the events were for people who are ‘publicly accepted as women’ and that they urge me and my friends to consider if other audience members will feel ‘comfortable with your personal identity’ before attending any events.”

Sisters Uncut Edin (I think the word ‘uncut’ is meant to be taken literally)  posted:  “We stand in solidarity with the trans, nb, gender non-conforming and cis allies who have called for a boycott of the festival.”  (Cis, for practical purposes, refers people who still have the gender assigned to them at birth.)  So, on the face of the matter, it’s not good enough to accept trans women as women, which is what the Festival does; there also has to be space for non-conforming, non-binary, non-females, or it becomes the act of a “#terf” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist).

The first question to consider is whether it is legitimate to ask for distinct spaces for people of different genders.  The need for women-only spaces is recognised in equality law.  As a man, I accept that women need safe spaces; for example, as a social work supervisor with a student working in Women’s Aid, I wasn’t permitted to set foot on the premises.  Women’s discussion groups have long established the principle that the presence of men changes the dynamics of group conversation. Men, and people raised as men, are socialised to engage in discussion in different ways (and often try to dominate).  The rationale for making a distinction in supportive groups is that people from different genders have different life experiences, and behave differently as a result.  Trans, non-binary and non-conforming people have different experiences again – and have just as good a case for a distinct safe space in their own right; but that experience will not be reflected either in a men’s group or a women’s group.

The second question concerns the criteria used for inclusion and exclusion.  It seems to me that if trans, non-binary and non-conforming can be treated as a unifying category (and that, rather than trans inclusion, is the substance of the protest) we are not talking about conventional distinctions between women and men at all.  Some people extend that to include LGBTIQ+ – but that lumps gender together with sexuality, and in any case we are running out of alphabet. The issue is surely, if I can borrow a phrase from Jonathan Sacks, about recognising and valuing “the dignity of difference” – a principle which applies much more widely than the issues of gender.  But you cannot hope to rely on that principle for yourself if you deny it for others; and that, regrettably, is what the critics of the Festival are doing.

The third question concerns the boycott.  I’m baffled that the people demanding to be included can imagine that this is the way to pursue an argument.  Boycotts are exclusive; they stand at the opposite end from tactics of discourse, argument and persuasion. They are beloved by trolls and bullies.  The trans-activists who made this call are behaving like Men.  This is not what feminism looks like.

Scotland’s Racial Equality Plan is a model of good sense

The press reports on the Racial Equality Plan made me apprehensive.  They’ve been talking about ‘targets’ for minority ethnic employment in Scotland.  In the limited work I’ve done on minority groups, what came over was the diversity – the position, for example, of Filipinos, gypsy travellers and and people from South-East Asia  – and their relative isolation.  There are too many small, dispersed minorities in a society to make intervention by numbers effective.   I needn’t have worried.  The plan, advised by Kaliani Lyle, is exemplary, recognising the special pressures on particular groups (notably Gypsy Travellers)  but with the emphasis strongly falling on dialogue, consultation and engagement.   Things done well are never as satisfying to a blogger as things done badly, so I’ve not much to add.

Equal opportunity for werewolves

This is a little out of my usual line, but the story in yesterday’s Independent is so fabulous that it demands to be included.  Cristina Kirchner, the President of Argentina, has adopted a Jewish man to save him from becoming a werewolf.  Juan Peron extended the protection to women, and since 2009 it has been available to Jews; this adoption comes 21 years after his parents asked for him to be included.   The tradition carries some important privileges, including an educational scholarship, and President Kirchner has used the opportunity to promote harmony in different cultures.

The most direct way to improve health: more money

A new study by the Scottish Public Health Observatory has reviewed the potential effects on health of a series of interventions.  The effects on health are considered mainly in terms of mortality and the need for hospital care.  The measures in relation to incomes, cutting alcohol, tobacco or obesity, and encouraging cycling and walking to work.

Health interventions

The biggest benefits, by far, would be gained by the introduction of a living wage; the next biggest, though it is even more important for the poor, would be an increase in minimum income benefits.  Some of the measures they are being compared to seem restrained – a weight-management service rather than measures to reduce sugar, short-term interventions on alcohol rather than taxation by unit – but the size of the difference is so big that it’s unlikely to  tilt the table.

Quotas: another zombie argument

The Guardian reports that the Labour party is considering, yet again, introducing quotas to protect the position of women and minority ethnic groups.  This time it’s about the English judiciary, but whenever the idea of quotas is mooted, it’s generally intended to protect the position of disadvantaged groups.  Good motives, however,  do not justify bad ideas.  What the proponents seem not to grasp, no matter how many times it’s been shown to be the case, is that quotas are self-defeating – either ineffective, or counter-productive – a thoroughly bad way to respond to disadvantage.

First, quotas are exclusive as well as inclusive – they define who can’t be appointed as well as who can.  So, people from the ‘wrong’ minority ethnic group are disadvantaged relative to others from the ‘right’ group.  That is the source of a string of cases in the USA, notably Bakke and De Funis.  Second, quotas become ceilings.  Elster, in Local Justice (1992), compiles a long list of evidence that while quotas may initially help to redress the balance, they shortly become devices to stop the process of equality going any further.   Third, even before the ceiling is reached, quotas act to slow down the process of redressing the balance, deterring and limiting applications from the very people they’re supposed to help.

There are decades of evidence to draw on – that’s why quotas were made illegal in the Race Relations legislation of the 1970s.   But this is another of those ‘zombie’ arguments.  It doesn’t seem to matter how often it’s exploded, cut down, disappeared or  confined, it just carries on shuffling towards us.