Decoding Tory doublespeak
It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning (for example, naming a state of war “peace”). In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth. Doublespeak is most closely associated with political language.
— Doublespeak, Wikipedia
We will not introduce new basic rights through this reform … Our new Bill will clarify these limitations on individual rights in certain circumstances … Limit the user of human rights laws to the most serious cases … There will be a threshold below which Convention rights will not be engaged.
— Protecting human rights in the UK, Conservative MP Chris Grayling, October 2014
In a democratic society, a government that works against the wishes of its people will soon be voted out of power by those people. An exception to this is if the party does one thing but calls it something else, so the people don’t know what’s happening and may even fight against their own interests. This is known as doublespeak.
You will rarely find a better example than a document called Protecting human rights in the UK, in which the UK’s Conservative Party outlines their plans to weaken human rights legislation.
Degrading human rights in the UK
The document outlines the following plan:
- Forbid the European Court of Human Rights from being able to change UK law, and make all ECHR rulings non-binding so the UK can ignore them
- Repeal the Human Rights Act 1998, with the following results:
- UK judges are no longer required to interpret UK law in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights, even though the UK was the first country to ratify the ECHR and was a considerable influence in its creation in 1950
- UK judges can no longer issue a ruling that a UK law is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights
- Citizens can no longer sue the UK courts over ECHR violations. They can still take a case to the European court, but under these plans EU court rulings will not be binding
- Limit the use of human rights laws to serious cases such as crime
- Limit the use of human rights laws to UK territory, specifically preventing UK soldiers serving abroad from using human rights legislation
- Adopt a more limited definition of “degrading treatment or punishment” than has been ruled by EU courts
- Allow a person’s rights to be denied in more circumstances than the EU courts have ruled is reasonable
- Withdraw the United Kingdom entirely from the European Convention on Human Rights, if UK is not allowed to ignore EU court rulings
- Threaten to veto the EU’s entry into the European Convention for Human Rights
as a unit, as per the Treaty of
Lisbon,
which would otherwise force the UK to leave the EU:
- Not mentioned in this document, the Conservative Party announced plans to hold a referendum to leave the European Union
- UK citizens would lose the benefits of EU membership, such as the right to live in other EU countries without a visa, while UK companies would lose EU migrant workers
- UK citizens will no longer be able to appeal to EU courts
- Citizens would gain no additional rights under this plan, nor would the existing rights be granted any extra protections
Remember, this is all in a document is titled Protecting human rights in the UK.
More doublespeak
The document uses some words that sound good, but mean something worse:
- “Clarify” or “clarified” (5 times): Typically refers to limitations on human rights. But the limitations aren’t vague or confusing, they’re just defined by an EU court whose rulings the Conservatives disagree with. When they say clarify, they mean redefine or overrule. The difference is that to “clarify” a law doesn’t change it or give any new powers, but what they’re doing effectively does change the law.
- “Common sense” (2 times): Again, the suggestion here is that the answers are obvious to all people and the EU court is ruling against the truth. Common sense means our rulings rather than the EU’s. The document also makes numerous references to the original intentions of the human rights legislation which the EU is supposedly disobeying. Grayling wisely remembers that his own MPs authored the ECHR in the 1950s, so he can’t say that the ECHR is broken, only that Strasbourg isn’t applying it “properly”.
- “Appropriate balance” or “proper balance” (3 times): Balance here refers to the idea that rights can be limited. Grayling disagrees with the EU on what is appropriate balance.
- “Responsibilities” (7 times): As in “rights and responsibilities”, a concept which replaces “rights”. Responsibilities are situations where rights may be removed. The ECHR allows for some (e.g. the right to freedom of movement may be denied to prisoners), but the UK wants to enshrine “responsibilities” in law in order to create clearly-defined legal framework for denying rights to some of its citizens some of the time.
Disguised goals
The clear goal of the Conservatives is to prevent the EU from overruling UK law on human rights. This is a problem for the current government, and one which their proposed legislation would solve. Some recent examples where this has been relevant:
- The EU ruled in 2012 that the UK prohibiting prisoners from voting in elections violated their rights. The UK has not changed its law to comply with the ruling, with Chris Grayling telling MPs they were allowed to legislate contrary to the fundamental principles of human rights. The Human Rights Commissioner for the Council of Europe disputed this.
- GCHQ’s classified surveillance systems have recently been challenged under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to privacy. Leaked documents show that GCHQ was concerned about the possibility of such a legal challenge if the public found out. Under Tory plans, the UK government will be free to rule its own domestic mass surveillance perfectly legal.
But the document claims a cover reason:
In today’s uncertain world, our commitment to fundamental human rights is as important as ever. That is why we must put Britain first, taking action to reform the human rights laws in the UK, so they are credible, just and command public support.
This cleverly implies that the existing human rights legislation is unjust and lacks credibility and public support, and that the new bill is intended primarily to solve problems of injustice and public perception of human rights law. In reality, the examples given suggest that the Conservatives’ problem with current law is that ECHR rulings tend to give people more freedoms and rights than some think is necessary.
Conclusion
The reality here is that “protecting human rights in the UK” is only accurate if it’s used to mean “protecting the UK government’s right to decide who does and doesn’t get human rights”. It’s being sold to citizens as “protecting your rights”, but it only “protects” the UK government from being sued for human rights violations by its own citizens or the EU human rights body that the UK created in the 1950s precisely to prevent this kind of thing from happening.