Northern Ireland Assembly
Tuesday 25 September 2001 (continued)
Mr Attwood:
The point is that it is difficult to balance the rights of victims, the right to privacy, the right to information and all the other relevant rights. The intervention of a body such as the Human Rights Commission can be open to a certain interpretation by one side or the other.
12.45 pm
The fact that the Human Rights Commission intervened to try to restrain what the BBC might publish, and to ensure that victims and their families had more information than they might otherwise have received, confirms its best intentions rather than the Member's worst fears. By intervening in that way, the Human Rights Commission confirmed its good faith, good intentions, good standards and good values. Its intervention was not evidence of partiality and unfairness, as the Member concludes. Dr Birnie's point confirms my point rather than disproving it.
I will deal with some issues that were not addressed by the proponent of the motion. Rather than damn the Human Rights Commission, I praise it and would try to enhance it. Rather than claim that the bill of rights does not meet the standards that Dr Birnie says would be appropriate, we must try to enable the commission to meet the standards that would enable it to provide all the citizens of the North with the fullest possible protection and enforcement of human rights.
It is a matter for regret that Dr Birnie did not take the opportunity to address issues identified by the Human Rights Commission in its response to the Secretary of State's review of its powers and resources, which were authorised by the Northern Ireland Act 1998. I would be more convinced by the proponent's comments if he had dealt with the wider agenda of trying to strengthen the Human Rights Commission with the powers and resources needed to identify and address all human rights issues in the North. That is what we have tried to do in our amendment.
At the moment, according to the Human Rights Commission, it does not have the powers and resources that it needs to enable it to do all that it would like to do. Its restricted powers and limited budget have prevented the commission from carrying out the extensive consultation on the bill of rights that it wished to do. It was unable to organise event training in preparation for the implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998 in October 2000; nor was it able to create a presence outside Belfast. It was unable to employ as many staff as it needed to deal with research, investigations, legislation, policy and educational development.
The Human Rights Commission has a limited budget of £750,000, which is 10 times less than the Equality Commission's funding, and the same amount that the RUC spends on 10 hours of activities in one year. Rather than condemn it for what it has produced, we should try to enhance it by giving it the powers and moneys that it requires. That is particularly relevant at the moment, because we are on the threshold of a new beginning for policing. The Patten Report said that human rights should be at the core of a new beginning for policing. The Human Rights Commission has a statutory function to ensure that human rights legislation is complied with and that that compliance is witnessed throughout Northern Ireland. If it is starved of its resources, it will be starved of the ability to give life to the new beginning for policing.
The Government might be about to announce the independent members of the Police Board. Is it not, therefore, appropriate to enable the policing board to carry out its functions and to give the Human Rights Commission the moneys needed to enable it to perform its statutory role of assisting the Police Board to fulfil its human rights requirements? The Republic of Ireland set up its statutory Human Rights Commission only a matter of weeks ago. Is it not time to upgrade the funding of the Human Rights Commission in the North to enable it to work with the commission in the South? That would enable them to build the joint programme of work and create the charter of rights, which are envisaged in the Good Friday Agreement, and which would be applicable to the citizens, political parties and the Governments on this island.
Is it not time to enhance the moneys of the Human Rights Commission in the North to enable it to work with its sister body in the South and ensure human rights compliance through a chartered bill of rights on this island? Is it not time to give the Human Rights Commission additional moneys so that the problems identified whereby the commission cannot adequately intervene on behalf of a third party in various court proceedings on this island can be addressed? The commission should be able to intervene so that people appearing before a court can benefit from the help of a statutory agency in preparing their case, and the court could also benefit from the expertise of the Human Rights Commission when a hearing is scheduled. In that way, rather than deny and diminish the role of the Human Rights Commission in the North, we can enable it and enhance its powers.
I make these points because as Frank Wright, an academic at Queen's University, once said, "when conflicts are fully developed, they revolve around issues of law, order and justice". Our experiences on this island in the last 30 years confirm that the conflict has always revolved around issues of law, order and justice. That is why those issues are put centre-stage in the Good Friday Agreement: that is why reports were commissioned on policing and on criminal justice; and that is why the agreement provided for the creation of the Equality Commission, the Human Rights Commission, the Police Ombudsman and the Prisoners' Release Commission. To fully resolve the conflict that has revolved around issues of law, order and justice, we put mechanisms in place to address those issues, including the Human Rights Commission.
Why is that significant, not just for us, but internationally? When Mary Robinson was here in December 1999, she said that countries around the world, particularly those emerging from conflicts, were most interested in the Good Friday Agreement because of its human rights provisions. People around the world could easily and quickly identify with those provisions. If we can get our human rights mechanisms right - if they function properly and defend the rights of citizens and communities in the North - then we will provide an example of conflict resolution to other communities and other countries that are emerging from conflict. If we can get our Bill of Rights and our Human Rights Commission right, then we will be a candle in the darkness that is about to invade the world order.
Mr Poots:
I support the motion. Not surprisingly, I cannot support the amendment that has been put down in the name of Mr Attwood and Ms Lewsley. The issue of human rights is fundamental - the establishment of good human rights is something we should all support. However, the role played by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has diminished the human rights issue in Northern Ireland. It has led many people to reflect that those who speak for human rights issues are speaking on behalf of criminals, terrorists, and people who do not wish goodwill to others in our country.
Often, those who represent the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission seem more interested in the rights of criminals and terrorists than in the rights of ordinary individuals. When the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission was set up, Mo Mowlam gave it the kiss of death by her appointment of the board. Two SDLP members were appointed. It comes as no surprise that the SDLP are leading the fight today in defending the commission - [Interruption]
Mr A Maginness:
Can the Member tell me who were the two members of the SDLP?
Mr Poots:
Mrs Hegarty was one member. I do not have a note of the names with me, but another member of the SDLP was appointed at that time.
Mr A Maginness:
No member of the SDLP was appointed to the Human Rights Commission.
That is fact. Ms Hegarty was not a member of the SDLP at the time of her appointment. She had left the SDLP several years before her appointment. I assume the other person to whom the Member refers is Mr Donnelly. He was an SDLP councillor back in the early 70s and is no longer a member of the party. He was not a member of the SDLP at the time of his appointment.
Mr Poots:
I accept that you can leave the SDLP. You might not be able to leave the IRA just as easily, but you can leave the SDLP. Nevertheless, the fact that they had membership of the SDLP made their political allegiances quite clear.
The Human Rights Commission did not have representatives from the Unionist community, nor did it have people who had previously been members of either of the main Unionist parties. In fact, some people of good standing in the community, who had a good legal background and who were well placed to take positions on the Human Rights Commission, were refused places. I understand that as resignations from the Human Rights Commission have taken place, the current Secretary of State, and the previous Secretary of State, sought to remedy that situation. However, because people felt that the credibility of the Human Rights Commission was at a low ebb, they wanted to take no part in it.
It has failed to gain the confidence of the Unionist community by its actions. For example, it has given support to the Finucane, Hamill and Rosemary Nelson cases but has failed to give support to the cases of Billy Wright, Superintendents Buchanan and Breen or Lord Justice Gibson. The Commission also did a critical analysis on the use of plastic bullets but did not seem to take much account of those people who were in the line of fire and had to use plastic bullets. It did not appear to give much credence to the fact that people's lives were being put at risk by petrol and acid bombs, bricks and even live bullets being fired at them, yet it is very critical of the use of plastic bullets by the RUC.
It complains about a lack of resources - the commission has some £750,000 - yet it clearly spent a great deal of money on the document 'Enhancing the Rights of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual People in Northern Ireland'. This is a fairly extensive document - a document that was not published without a great deal of cost. I have to say that some of the proposals in the document are extremely offensive. For example, it reckons that the Blood Transfusion Service's ban on men who have engaged in anal sex, from donating blood - one of several categories of exclusion from blood donation - to be discrimination. The commission believes that it is a human right for homosexuals to be able to give blood. I say that it is a human right for people receiving blood to know that they are getting clean blood - blood that has not been contaminated with the HIV virus. I believe that it is essentially wrong to be claiming, on the one hand, to be protecting one person's human rights but, on the other, to be attacking the human rights of other individuals.
Often when we see the case being put for one individual's human rights, it actually undermines the human rights of another individual. I noted that its 'Making a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland' mentions language rights. This document says that everyone has the right to communicate with any public body through an interpreter, translator or facilitator. If we were to go down that road, with the Department for Regional Development having somebody in every office who could translate into Gaelic and into Ulster-Scots, and if every school, hospital and Housing Executive office in Northern Ireland were to have a translator, how much would it cost? What are the cost implications of many of the recommendations of the Human Rights Commission? If such costs were to be met, how many more people would be waiting for hip operations or cardiac surgery? How many more people would be discriminated against because too few houses were being built in their area?
The proposals of the Human Rights Commission, in many cases, are not costed. It claims that people are being discriminated against, but if the commission's proposals were to be implemented, many more people would be discriminated against.
1.00 pm
Mr Attwood defended the Human Rights Commission by reference to its support for the victims of the Omagh bomb. When representatives of the Human Rights Commission were before the Committee of the Centre, I asked what its views were on two particular victims of the Omagh bomb, the twin children who were murdered while still within their mother's womb, seven months into her pregnancy. They did not have a view on that. They could not express a view on it.
Mr Attwood is therefore defending a Human Rights Commission that will not defend the human rights of unborn children. It could not admit that the rights of two unborn children were destroyed by the Real IRA. What sort of Human Rights Commission is that? The children were healthy in their mother's womb, but because they did not happen to have been two months older, they were deemed not to have any human rights.
In relation to paramilitary organisations the Human Rights Commission has not done enough work. There have been 323 human rights abuses by these organisations, on all sides, in the last year, but I have heard no hue and cry from the commission about that, nor has it produced an extensive document on the matter. The commission has also neglected other issues, such as third-party planning appeals. It seems to have concentrated its efforts on what it would see as pro-prisoner, pro-terrorist and pro- Nationalist programmes. It has not done the work it should have been doing. It has not established faith among the Unionist community, and I do not believe it has established faith within the broader community who find terrorist and criminal acts offensive.
The Human Rights Commission has been on trial for the past three years. The funding it has received has been on a trial basis. Having been tried, it has been found wanting. I cannot therefore support Mr Attwood's analysis and amendment, because the Human Rights Commission has failed - and failed miserably.
Mr Deputy Speaker:
I thank the Business Committee for giving up some of its time to allow this debate to continue. We will adjourn now until 2.00 pm when a number of Members wish to speak. We will have to ration time then.
Mr Ervine:
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker, am I right in saying that when we return, time will be rationed, but that time overall was not rationed?
Mr Deputy Speaker:
We were using the same indicative times that you are aware of.
Mr Ervine:
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is inordinately unfair that a Member who is not the proposer or, indeed, not the proposer of an amendment was allowed an unlimited time, which means that other Members will have less when they return.
Mr Deputy Speaker:
He was allowed on the basis that he is a member of the Committee of the Centre. We will adjourn now until 2.00 pm.
The sitting was suspended at 1.04 pm.
On resuming (Mr Deputy Speaker [Mr McClelland] in the Chair) -
2.00 pm
Mr Deputy Speaker:
Many Members have indicated that they wish to speak, and for that reason I shall limit each Member to five minutes.
Mrs Nelis:
Go raibh maith agat, a LeasCheann Comhairle. I oppose the motion and support the amendment. The motion should be seen for what it is - another attempt by Unionists to undermine the Good Friday Agreement. They want to purge, in the words of Sylvia Hermon, that section on rights, safeguards and equality to which they signed up to and now do not like. Rights and equality are alien words to the Unionist mindset, but the agreement and the Act put human rights at the centre of political, social and economic change on this island.
The Human Rights Commission has been given the specific task of ensuring that that happens. Part of the task is to advise the British Government on a bill of rights, complementary and additional to the Human Rights Commission, which will reflect the particular circumstances of the North. After 18 months and six- county-wide consultations with the commission, the UUP has suddenly discovered that all sorts of people, precisely 67% of Protestants and 88% of Catholics, think that the bill of rights it is not only a good idea, but is essential.
Unionism has never recognised, let alone reflected on, the particular circumstances of the North and the construction of a state whose very existence depended on division, inequality and the abuse of human rights. It is precisely because of that, and to address the human rights deficit, that Sinn Féin argued strongly that the sections on rights, safeguards and equality should ensure that the causes of conflict were prioritised and addressed.
All parties that signed up to the agreement accepted that and affirmed their commitment to mutual respect. However, the party that tabled today's motion has done absolutely nothing to confirm its commitment to mutual respect and parity of esteem. It has never acknowledged the right to self-determination, which is the only human right for which an explicit formulation was agreed in the Good Friday Agreement which was supported in referendums North and South. The motion is about trying to change the agreement and the composition of the Human Rights Commission because it does not suit the narrow Unionist agenda. It is an example of a party on the run: on the run from the DUP; on the run from the Human Rights Commission; and on the run from the agreement to which it signed up.
It is even out of step with its own people. They want a bill of rights, and they wish to contribute to it, judging by the e-mails that we have received. On 8 May, David Trimble, in one of his more lucid periods, said that the core principles of human rights and equality are woven into the fabric of the agreement and reflected in the Programme for Government. However, how do Unionists make progress on those core principles? They attack the Human Rights Commission for carrying out its remit as laid down in the agreement.
Yesterday, the media treated us to the unsavoury situation of two parties, the DUP and the UUP, scratching around for signatures for a motion to exclude democratically-elected representatives in order to bring down the Assembly. The UUP has the audacity to censure the Human Rights Commission. One can see that it may feel the need to defend its junior Minister, Dermot Nesbitt, after his outrageous outburst at the launch of the consultation document 'Making a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland'.
The attack on the commission and the outright rejection of the consultation document was not lost on the audience, which greeted his outburst with a stunned silence. Nor was it lost on them that the Minister was using the occasion to advance his narrow-minded, bigoted, party political position on a bill of rights before it had even got off the ground. I would suggest that he resign, but he is going to anyway.
This is not the first time that Unionism has dismissed efforts to enact a bill of rights here. When the late Sheelagh Murnaghan tried to do so in the 1960s, her efforts were stonewalled by the same Unionist mindset that is on display here. In retrospect, those Unionists might reflect that, had they placed a bill of rights on the political agenda then, this society might have been spared 30 years of conflict. There are many things in the draft document that Sinn Féin will challenge, but, overall, the draft pursues a liberal Unionist agenda. It is clear from the motion that the Unionists, not content with the British Government's efforts to neutralise the commission through lack of powers and resources, want to put the commission and the agreement out of business. I oppose the motion.
Mrs E Bell:
I oppose the motion and support the amendment. There are several reasons for my opposition, but chief among them is my belief that the motion is pointless and out of time. My Colleagues in the Ulster Unionist Party have expressed concern and reservation that the Human Rights Commission has exceeded its authority. They fear that the consultation document is too broad and that it covers rights that are not particular to Northern Ireland. The Human Rights Commission clearly sets out its remit and its approach to fulfilling that. That is clear in the document.
On page 12, the commission quotes extensively from the Good Friday Agreement. It then goes on to explain various interpretations of Northern Ireland's particular circumstances drawing, as appropriate, on international instruments and experience. It further states that the interpretation of the Bill should be based on human dignity, equality and freedom, without any threat to rights adequately protected by law.
After reading the consultation document, I can only commend the commission for its frankness. The Human Rights Commission does not claim to have the final answer for what is meant in paragraph 4 of the Good Friday Agreement about exclusive Northern Ireland rights. Instead, it explicitly asks for the opinions and reasoning of all people in Northern Ireland. The first three questions that it poses are an attempt to have us, the people of Northern Ireland, help define its remit.
It is only right that Members of the Assembly would have concerns and disagree with what the commission has set forth in its entirety. However, it is no surprise that those are the types of opinions that the commission wishes to hear. Members should be more effective in lobbying the Human Rights Commission about the ways in which it believes that it has exceeded its remit and by holding this debate today. Fortunately, they can do both. The ad hoc human rights consortium that supports a fully inclusive debate on a bill of rights is an example of effective lobbying. The consortium consists of representatives from over 50 voluntary and community groups.
'Making a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland' is merely a consultative document that can be changed, and more then likely it will be changed, perhaps as a result of this debate. However, I am, on the whole, pleased with its contents. Historically, the Alliance Party has supported a bill of rights, and I am pleased that it supports the concept of proportional representation, which ensures everyone's right to participate in government. For a long time, we have advocated that such a bill incorporate international standards, which the document does.
Initially, my party was wary that the commission would interpret its remit too narrowly and focus exclusively on group rights. I am pleased that that has not happened. I agree with the reasoning to support the inclusion of a section on children's rights and of strongly-worded statements on women's rights. I am sure that the proponents of the motion will argue that neither children nor women are unique to Northern Ireland, but I counter that with the point that, although they are not unique, they have suffered under our unique circumstances. For too long their rights, not to mention the rights of ethnic minorities, have been at the bottom of every agenda.
We need a strong bill of rights to address those past wrongs and to protect the needs of all communities. I oppose the motion for those reasons. The document is for consultation; it is not set in stone. The commission is seeking our advice, as well as the advice of many others in the Province. It acknowledges its remit and explains how and why it has interpreted it. In the document, commission says that the final delivery of an effective bill of rights is the concern of everyone interested in the search for long-term peace and stability in Northern Ireland, the two Governments, the political parties, civil society and all the people of Northern Ireland.
Finally, many of the rights may seem universal and may have a particular bearing here. Now is the time to try to improve those rights for all in Northern Ireland, and not only those in the two perceived communities. I support the amendment.
Mr Ervine:
Dr Birnie began by assuring us of his belief in human rights he felt the need to repeat that, so he finished off by assuring us of his commitment to human rights. What came in between was a right-wing rant-right wing in its attitude to economics and economic opportunity, and right wing generally. It will be interesting to see whether the Ulster Unionist Party is the broad church that we are told that it is - Genghis Khan elements early, and perhaps a few Joe Stalin elements later. However, it seems that we may not see that. I have seen this before. It may not have been to do with human rights; it may have been to do with socialism or with how economics might be dealt with differently in society. The death knell for that was sectarianism and a refusal to believe that if you were Unionist or Protestant that was anything to do with you. It was a Catholic and Republican matter; it was not a matter for ordinary citizens.
"Reds under the bed" - and I am not accusing Dr Birnie of saying that - have been alive and well in society for a very long time. I can remember people who are now Members of this House branding people as "reds under the bed" because they advocated something that was different from the style and nature of what they had lived under for so long.
Dr Birnie went through the booklet produced by the commission and made arguments. Rather than deal with those, let me tell him something of which he may or may not be aware. I have had the luxury - dubious as it may be - of sitting in Committee Rooms here, and I have heard members of the Human Rights Commission being interrogated with abject hostility by representatives of the Unionist community on all kinds of issues. To pick up the document and show your hostility to it does not tell the whole truth. There are Members present who have been on those Committees and who know that. There was abject bitterness and hostility because somehow those people were seen to be defending terrorists and sticking their noses in where they did not belong.
Perhaps we should take ownership of an element that would assist our institutions to function more practically. In the words of Edwin Poots, the Unionist community has had no ownership of this. Why has it had no ownership? What are we afraid of? Are we afraid to defend a human being's right? Are Protestants and Unionists not human beings? What is there to be frightened about? That is a sign of the insecurity that permeates our society, an insecurity that is not in the first instance proffered to us by our enemy. It is proffered to us often in the first instance by our leadership: be afraid of this; be afraid of that; be afraid of the dark. It will be difficult to see a human rights system here that works properly, because I do not imagine that a sterling job can be done by the commission, given the pathetic amount of money that it has been allocated.
2.15 pm
It seems that all Prods are clairvoyant - and there is never any good news. They are afraid of the dark and rather than switch on the light - take ownership of something and be part of it, so that it would be the way that they wanted it to be - they run away from it. That is what is happening today. The refusal to allow or encourage the Unionist community to take ownership of the Human Rights Commission makes it difficult for all of us to sell the concept of human rights.
A Member from one of the parties - he is not in the Chamber now - once said that there should be no such thing as human rights legislation in Northern Ireland. Perhaps, he reflects more accurately the feelings of Members on those Benches. We shall hear some strange stuff in the next half-hour about how people think that they are so decent as regards human rights.
Ms McWilliams:
I am also concerned about some of what was said earlier. Mr Edwin Poots's remarks about giving blood reminded me what giving blood was all about. Members who gave blood here last year will know that people give it because they know that, some day, someone will need it - not because they expect to get it back automatically. Perhaps that also applies to human rights. To have proper regard for human rights means that we should enshrine in law something from which we may not necessarily benefit, but which other people - Unionist or Nationalist - need. That is a better way to talk about giving blood than the disgraceful comments made by the Member for Lagan Valley about the rights of gays and lesbians.
Mr Poots:
Will the Member give way?
Ms McWilliams:
I will not give way. The Member had an opportunity to clarify his point after he made it. It is shameful that a Member should make such a comment.
The speech made by the mover of the motion made me despair. He calls himself an economist, while arguing that Northern Ireland is doing so well that we no longer have to concern ourselves with our deprivation and poverty rates, because they are coming into line with those in the rest of the United Kingdom. Reports produced by agencies such as the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) repeatedly state that, given the proportion of children in the Northern Ireland population, our poverty rates far exceed those elsewhere. Did we not hear Sir Reg Empey refer to that yesterday when he introduced the draft Programme for Government? We must take account of the fact that we have fallen so far behind. It is good for us to enshrine rights that deal with economic and social deprivation.
Dr Birnie may have received the same faxes as I did from Save the Children, from the Multicultural Resource Centre, from Barnardo's, from Women in Politics and from Amnesty International. All those organisations expressed concern about the idea that we should have anything to fear from the wide-ranging consultation carried out by the Human Rights Commission and they restated their support for the commission. Despite a lack of resources, the Human Rights Commission had to encourage other organisations to set up their own discussions on human rights. It welcomed that opportunity. For some reason, Dr Birnie said that it was not good for the Human Rights Commission to be involved in campaigning and debating and that its role was purely consultative. Does it not enrich our civic life to have a commission involved in campaigning for and debating a Bill of Rights?
These are good days for Northern Ireland - despite the depressing and distressing scenes that one sees on the streets. In the future, Members will be able to tell their children - if not their grandchildren - that they were involved when the country was drawing up a bill of rights. How many people in history have had that wonderful opportunity? However, Members are denying that opportunity to the communities and are saying that the Human Rights Commission should not have bothered campaigning and debating something as important as the rights of a country's people.
Dr Birnie also said that the commission stirs up extraordinary expectations. We have had an extraordinary past, and it is little wonder that people have raised themselves to have a vision of a different future. They will not be disappointed. If people have been involved in the discussions and take ownership of those discussions, they know that it will be a win-win situation. They know that they will have to give something when the bill of rights is decided.
Did those Members who criticised so loudly make submissions during the previous consultation, and do they intend to do so following the current round?
Mr McCartney:
The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission was doomed from the moment the basic human rights of Unionists were denied in the selection and appointment its members. Excellently qualified candidates with no Unionist political associations, senior solicitors in mixed partnerships and university lecturers of consummate intelligence were set aside for others of questionable competence.
For Ulster Unionists to complain that the Human Rights Commission has failed to discharge its remit under the agreement is another example of pro-agreement selective amnesia, which affects so many of those who negotiated and signed it. The commission's mandate and remit clearly states that its duty is to constitute a bill of rights for Northern Ireland. That is similar to the Ulster Unionists' attitude to Patten; when the outcome does not suit them they deny that they granted the remit that brought about the mischief.
It is pointless to complain about the job that the commission has made of its remit when the basic fault is the existence of the remit. A bill of rights for Northern Ireland means provincial human rights for Northern Ireland that do not apply to our fellow citizens in the rest of the United Kingdom.
The concept of provincial human rights violates two basic principles. First, there is the equality of citizenship - that the rights and duties of all citizens in the United Kingdom should be equal. Secondly, human rights are universal - their very claim to special privilege in law is that they apply to all human beings, and across all provincial and national boundaries. Universality is the fundamental basis of human rights.
The proposals set out in the commission's draft bill of rights would move Northern Ireland further out of the United Kingdom than it already is, and that outcome should have been foreseen by those in the Ulster Unionist Party who negotiated and signed the Belfast Agreement. The fact that they did not foresee that, means that they stand condemned as incompetent negotiators.
The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and other non-statutory bodies who work in the same field have a case to answer, because their efforts to protect human rights almost exclusively focus on the state, in all its aspects, as the primary source of human rights violations.
Woolly-minded liberals draw no distinction between competing human rights. They draw no distinction between the right to silence and the right to life. Those groups have taken what some might unkindly characterise as the human rights industry and almost completely failed to respond to the growing trend in the real world of citizens' human rights being violated by non-state bodies. The Home Secretary, Mr Blunkett, recently said that human rights will have to take second place to the security of life and the security of the state. The commission has almost entirely ignored the violation of human rights by non-state bodies - paramilitaries and their increasing band of criminal auxiliaries. That state of affairs might be characterised as the privatisation of human rights violations.
It is little short of a scandal that the commission and others have little to say about, and devote a small proportion of their resources to doing something about, the punishment beatings, intimidation, extortion, robberies and organised fraud conducted by paramilitary groups - some of whose frontmen and frontwomen sit in the Assembly and enjoy Executive office.
I listened to a farrago of bitterness and a myopic view of the commission's report from Mrs Nelis. She represents a party that is inextricably linked to a paramilitary organisation that has committed some of the most inhuman, horrible and outrageous violations of human rights, yet she has the brass neck to come here and lecture other citizens who belong to democratic parties about how they should behave.
The Human Rights Commission should start to address the real issues. Those are the violations of the most fundamental human rights: the right to live; the right to bring up children in peace; and the right to have personal integrity from violent personal injury.
Mr Dalton:
I support the motion put forward by my Colleague Dr Birnie, not because I am opposed to human rights - as suggested by one Sinn Féin Member - and not because Unionism is afraid of human rights. I have had an interest in human rights for many years. I studied the subject at university, and I continue to maintain an interest.
I am a firm believer in human rights. I believe in equal political and civil rights for all citizens in the United Kingdom, throughout the European Union and the world. I want to see those rights protected. However, I am concerned that the new Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has not been doing that. It has not been fulfilling its remit. Instead, it has tried to create some kind of social engineering document in order to put forward a ?s-style socialist view of society. The commission wants to try to impose that view on the rest of us and take away the decisions that we are supposed to make about political life from political instruments such as the Assembly.
I support the right of women to choose whether to have an abortion, and I support the right to same-sex marriage. However, those issues should not be contained in a bill of rights. They are political issues. They are issues on which one makes a political decision in the political institutions that we have set up. They are issues for us to argue, not to be laid down in a bill of rights to be discussed and ruled on by courts. That is not the appropriate way with which to deal with those issues. They are not the subjects of fundamental human rights; they are political decisions.
In some ways I would like to distance myself from the remarks that Mr Poots made, as I am uncomfortable with them, but, at the same time, he reflected a view that is held in the Unionist community. The Human Rights Commission has singularly failed to promote an awareness of human rights culture and of human rights in the Unionist community. As Mr McCartney said, that happened because the then Secretary of State took no regard of her legal duty to appoint a commission that fully reflected of the community, and instead appointed from within the human rights lobby or industry.
That is a great shame and has been the disaster that has underpinned much of what the Human Rights Commission has tried to do since - and this is where I disagree with Mr McCartney. The remit that was given to the commission in the Belfast Agreement was not to draw up a bill of rights, but
"to consult and advise on the scope for defining, in Westminster legislation, rights supplementary to those in the European Convention on Human Rights, to reflect the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland."
Its job is to advise and consult on supplementary rights. Although the European Convention has not been incorporated, its remedies are available to UK citizens through the Human Rights Act 1998. That was probably one of the major pieces of legislation to go through Westminster since the European Communities Act 1972. It represents a significant change in the way in which the legal system in the United Kingdom will operate. It has an effect on Northern Ireland and has done so since October 2000.
Whenever the Human Rights Commission thinks it is relevant, it will mention the Human Rights Act 1998, but it does not look at the Act. It does not take account of the effect that the 1998 Act has had, and instead runs off to produce a completely separate document.
2.30 pm
The Human Rights Commission was supposed to ask what extra rights and protections were necessary to meet Northern Ireland's particular circumstances. The answer to that question could be that no additional rights to those in the European Convention are needed. The commission could have concluded that the European Convention on Human Rights was sufficient to protect the political and civil rights of Northern Ireland people as part of the United Kingdom, and through the protections offered to them by the 1998 Act. The commission did not do that. It said that it had been given a remit to produce a bill of rights and that that is what it would do. It produced an astounding, incredible document that has no precedent in international law.
My other concern is that, in producing the document, the commission has significantly alienated the Unionist community. Instead of being able to embrace human rights culture and look at human rights as offering protection for the Unionist culture, the Unionist community has been alienated by the commission's course of action. What is the commission doing about the difficult issues, such as the right to assemble? Human rights are not about protecting the rights that one particularly favours; it is about protecting all rights, which include those on difficult issues with which one may not agree. If someone wishes to produce fascist or racist work he has a right to do that, and that right should be defended. I may not agree with such people but their right to express their opinions has to be protected. That is also true when it comes to the right to peaceful assembly. The commission has simply invented rights to try and oppose what should be protected.
Ms Lewsley:
I support the amendment. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, which derives its mandate from the Good Friday Agreement, is fundamentally important. Without the commission, the agreement's vision of a new beginning for Northern Ireland based on human rights for all cannot be realised.
It is all the more regrettable that the commission has not been given the budget and powers commensurate with its importance under the agreement. The SDLP welcomes recent improvements in the commission's budget but regrets the time that that has taken and the detrimental effect that that has had on the commission's ability to engage with wider civic society on the bill of rights. Our party also regrets the lack of powers given to the Human Rights Commission.
The commission recently reviewed its powers and effectiveness, and made detailed recommendations to the Secretary of State. However, the review makes for sad reading. It shows that, in the past two years, the Northern Ireland Office and criminal justice agencies have been able to stymie the commission's investigations through non-co-operation. It also shows how the commission has been powerless in the face of such obstruction, despite assurances at Westminster by the then Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam, that legislation would provide for full co-operation. Those assurances have not been honoured. That is why the SDLP has called for the commission's powers commission to be greatly enhanced. We have made it clear that the commission should enjoy the same extensive powers as those enjoyed by the Irish Human Rights Commission. Nothing less will bring our commission into line with the principles on the status and functioning of national institutions for protection and promotion of human rights - known as the Paris Principles. Nothing less will do.
The SDLP has proposed an amendment to the motion to highlight the commission's lack of powers and to call for those defects to be remedied. The Secretary of State has been considering a review of the commission's powers, but he has not responded yet. We await his acceptance of the commission's recommendations.
Despite all of this, the Human Rights Commission has discharged its mandate admirably. That can be clearly seen in the bill of rights.
The Good Friday Agreement states that the commission must consult and advise on the scope of defining rights supplementary to the European Convention on Human Rights. The commission is doing that. It has consulted; it has produced draft advice; and it is consulting on that advice. The agreement says that the commission should draw on "international instruments and experience." It has done so by examining countless international instruments. The agreement also says that the commission should
"reflect the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland".
It has accomplished that by laying emphasis on economic and social rights. Those rights can form the basis of a common agenda that can heal the divisions in Northern Ireland.
If there is one thing that the commission has not done, it is to make sufficiently strong provision for parity of esteem, and just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos and aspirations of both communities. The SDLP considers that a fundamental issue, because it is fundamental to the agreement itself. We would have wished for clearer provision for that matter, in order to reflect the agreement better. To base the rights on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities is not enough. The agreement, itself an international instrument, goes further by guaranteeing the equal treatment of both communities' aspirations, as opposed to merely their cultural identities.
The higher protection of rights given by the agreement deserves clearer recognition. However, this is just a consultation paper. It is no surprise that we, or any other party, should comment on it. It does not mean that the Human Rights Commission has not carried out its duties under the agreement.
It is regrettable that Unionist politicians have engaged in a negative debate on the commission. That is based on a complete misunderstanding of the issues. For example, I have heard complaints that some Unionists believe that the principle of consent should be included in the bill of rights -