Sunday, 29 May 2011

It's Not About the Constitution; It's About Human Rights

Noel Edmonds’ much lamented Noel’s HQ offered the celebrity box opener the opportunity to rant about any one of his right wing bug bears. One particular piece of invective slammed the number of laws and regulations “in the name of health and safety or security and the environment”. Edmonds was nicely skewered by Screenwipe’s Charlie Brooker: “gah, yeah, bloody health and safety and security and the environment…I hate them”.

Noel Edmonds probably isn’t compared to Alex Salmond terribly frequently. But the FM’s promised war on the Supreme Court put me in mind of Edmonds’ cavalier attitude to risk avoidance.

The bottom line, it seems to me, is this. Scotland’s highest court has, twice in recent years, fallen short in applying the minimum standards required by the European Convention on Human Rights; the Supreme Court has stepped in to enforce them; and, as a result, has preventing two Scots whose human rights have been trammelled from having to go to Strasbourg, a procedure which would have been lengthy (it’s not unknown for cases to take five years) and, given that the European Court can’t actually overturn the decisions of national courts, potentially unsatisfactory.

The two most obvious reactions would be, you would have thought, concern that Scottish judges seem to be behind the curve on human rights; and, satisfaction that the constitutional arrangements have provided Scots with a relatively quick and effective remedy.

Instead, the First Minister’s only reaction has been to grumble about a British court interfering in Scots law and plot its exclusion. Nothing he has said has a human rights dimension. But then that’s hardly surprising: it is, after all, emanations of Mr Salmond’s government which have been faulted by the Supreme Court, and it’s fairly clear that he doesn’t like to lose. Frankly, I find the sight of a government which has lost out in a court attempting to restrict access to it somewhat sinister, but the FM seems to have got away with it by turning a human rights issue into a constitutional one.

The irony is that, just a few weeks ago, we were being treated to independence lite, with certain shared institutions being retained where appropriate. You might have thought that a constitutional court comprising two of Scotland’s most senior judges, with the remainder coming from our closest legal cousins, and boasting relatively speedy recourse to justice would be a contender for retention. Apparently not.

But I digress. If the First Minister can explain how excluding the Supreme Court will have a beneficial impact on the human rights of Scots, I will listen. But if all he’s interested in the purity of Scots law (which is something of a mongrel system in any event) at the expense of protecting Scots’ fundamental rights, then I’m not interested.

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