A Bill of Rights or a Bill of Wrongs?

The Joint Committee on Human Rights has just launched their report on the case for a new British 'Bill of Rights'. I wholeheartedly support the idea of a formal constitutional document which is unambiguously British since I feel that a formal statement of the rights that citizens enjoy would better enable us to defend our rights against government intrusion. However, the Committee's proposed Bill is certainly not desirable. This is because in addition to the critical negative liberties (the right to free expression, the right to a fair trial in criminal proceedings) the Committee's report also introduces vague positive 'rights' of equal status to the most fundamental liberties.

According to the report, among the rights that would be enshrined are a right to 'appropriate health care services, free at the point of use and within a reasonable time' and a right to 'an adequate standard of living'. These 'rights' require the active involvement of others: while I would enjoy all my negative liberties were I never to come into contact with another human being, these positive 'liberties' actually require somebody else (the taxpayer) to provide them for me. Hence while I enjoy a right, others have an obligation forced upon them. While with negative liberties, my enjoyment of them does not conflict at all with others enjoying them, for positive liberties (given limited resources) it certainly does.

It is not difficult to see the problems the courts would have in deciding what is 'appropriate health care'. This vastly increases the power of judges at the expense of our elected Parliament: in the future the magnitude and direction of health spending (and therefore the size of the tax burden) would not be determined by the voters but instead by unelected and unaccountable judges making the decision as to what services we have a 'right' to and hence to what extent the government must tax the citizenry.

The additional danger is that a Bill of Rights which includes these vague and poorly defined rights would not command the respect of the government or of the British people. If it became clear that certain rights could not feasibly be provided, those other rights which must at all costs be protected could be tarnished by association. It could actually be more difficult to defend a vital right (the right to freedom of expression for example) if this right sat between two 'rights' which could not practically be delivered.

Personally, my model for a British Bill of Rights would be based largely on the US Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution). We obviously don't need the Tenth Amendment (which is irrelevant in a non-federal system) and I would be extremely uneasy with the incorporation of the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms) but with these minor changes, the US Bill of Rights would serve admirably as a statement of fundamental rights for the country which (unintentionally) inspired the formal protections of the American Bill of Rights.