No cross-community support - the lesson of the Bill of Rights Forum
Ahead of today’s publication of the Report of the Bill of Rights Forum, Dermot Nesbitt, the Ulster Unionist Party’s Rights and Equality Spokesperson, has urged the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission not to ignore the lack of cross-community support evident in the Forum’s Report.
Mr Nesbitt, a member of the Forum,, stated: “The Ulster Unionist Party participated in good faith in the Bill of Rights Forum, and I wish to thank the Chair - Professor Chris Sidoti - and his staff, for all their hard work.
“For nearly a decade, the issue of a bill of rights has been allowed to drift precisely because some key players had little or no interest in securing cross-community support for any proposals. Today, with the report’s publication, we can see in the most categorical and explicit terms that there is no cross-community support for a bill of rights which, instead of addressing the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland, has become a wish-list for some well-meaning and some not so well-meaning causes and agendas.
“Like every other part of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland already has a bill of rights in the Human Rights Act 1998. The Human Rights Act protects the fundamental rights and liberties of all people in the UK. According to the Belfast Agreement, we were meant to consider the scope for supplementary rights addressing some of the historic divisions in Northern Ireland - issues surrounding culture, identity, and equality.
“That is why we proposed a general equality and non-discrimination provision; urged the implementation of the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities; and supported clauses to secure the interests of the innocent victims of terrorism.
“The lack of cross-community support, however, for the vast majority of recommendations discussed in the Forum is quite simply staggering. Now it is the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission to carefully reflect on this fact and ensure that its proposals to the Secretary of State have the confidence of all parts of our community and political opinion in Northern Ireland”.
Paula Bradshaw, who also represented the Ulster Unionist Party on the Forum, said: “The UUP was concerned throughout the entire process that the grandiose claims made by some about socio-economic rights ignored hard realities. To claim that a bill of rights would solve issues such as housing or child poverty is disingenuous nonsense. The UUP strongly believes that these and other issues should be addressed through legislation, government programmes and targeted intervention. To do otherwise would undermine parliamentary democracy.
Politicians are elected by, and have a mandate from, the people of Northern Ireland to make hard decisions for society in relation to the use and allocation of resources – it is not for the courts to decide how tax-payers’ money should be spent. In the UK constitution, it is the role of judges and the courts to interpret and apply the law - not to make the law.
“In relation to some of the contentious issues mentioned in the media in recent months, the UUP opposes the raising of the age of criminal responsibility to 18; opposes proposed changes in relation to the age of recruitment into the armed forces; and, opposes calls for court-imposed changes to abortion law - as with many of the issues discussed in the Forum, this should be a matter for the elected representatives of the people of Northern Ireland in our Assembly.”