Rights and irresponsibilities

A couple of days ago the government launched a discussion about what it calls "rights and responsibilities". The Green Paper in which the scope of the discussion is contained sets out the government's position clearly. They seek to establish a new Bill of Rights. There is no special magic in the words "Bill of Rights" because there is no universal legal or linguistic limitation on what a state or government can include in something it calls a Bill of Rights. It could include fundamental constitutional principles only, or it could add specific laws of a non-constitutional nature. Following the latter course merely stores up problems for later.

Constitutional principles are all about the powers of the institutions known collectively as the State. In the UK those institutions grew up in various ways over time and many of the limitations on their powers are defined solely by convention. In recent times many of the ancient conventions (some of which are not actually particularly ancient) have been ignored by governments of both parties in favour of the unsupportable "I'm in office, therefore I'll do it how I want". Margaret Thatcher was noted for riding roughshod over her cabinet when she felt their collective view was wrong and that attitude has been taken further in the Blair and Brown years by the virtual abolition of cabinet government, with decisions being taken by a small cabal of the Prime Minister's trusted advisors (not all of whom are members of the government let alone the cabinet). The relationship between the executive and the legislature has also changed beyond recognition with policy announcements being leaked to the press and then announced to the press long before they are put to Parliament. Debate of important new legislation is curtailed like never before and some very serious issues are not allowed to be debated at all.

These changes of approach could not have occurred if the powers of the Prime Minister, the cabinet, the executive as a whole and the legislature were enshrined with specificity in an overriding constitutional document. I can see a case for such a document being produced provided it is limited to defining the powers of the main institutions of the State and contains a method of enforcement. The exercise is far more easily said than done, but that does not make it impossible.

What makes me shiver in anticipation of something truly ghastly is the present government's notion of a constitutional document setting out the responsibilities of the little people to each other and to the State. At the moment we owe one duty to both each other and to the institutions of the State. We must comply with the law. Nothing else is needed and nothing else is appropriate. If I breach my neighbour's legal rights he can seek a remedy against me through the courts. If I breach the criminal law the State can prosecute me through the criminal courts. In either event I will have done the same thing, I will have failed to comply with the law.

That is not to say that we are not subject to all sorts of forces that compel us to act in particular ways even though the law does not require us to do so. Most of us try to be polite and to treat people with respect, others aren't particularly bothered and others again are rude and insensitive. How we behave in ordinary everyday situations is a product of our upbringing and our own values of what is right and wrong. It is impossible to legislate for politeness, for helping little old ladies across the road, for community bulb-planting sessions and all the other nicenesses we do to make our lives less shallow and empty than they would otherwise be. Actually, that isn't right. Legislation can be passed and we can have Community Politeness Officers stationed at every supermarket check-out to hand a fixed penalty notice to those who fails to utter a please or a thank you. In the real world, however, legislation of such a nature would swiftly bring the law into even greater disrepute than the 3,000-odd new offences created over the last decade.

Against that background we have this Green Paper discussing rights and responsibilities. Most of it is concerned with enshrining the responsibilities of the little people into some sort of advisory code. The Green Paper specifically says that the government does not propose for such a code to have the force of law, yet there are lots of lines in the document and one does not even need to read between them to see that that is exactly what they have in mind. Time and again they mention specific responsibilities, such as attending court to give evidence and reporting activity consistent with money-laundering, and assert that they are not responsibilities compelled by law, whereas they are compelled by law. They suggest the code might contain a responsibility to treat NHS staff and other public sector employees with respect. Why just public sector, why not the lady behind the bacon counter at the supermarket and the waiter who serves your bowel-burning curry? If the public sector deserves special treatment those working in it will want to receive that special treatment not just hear that people are being invited to treat them particularly well. They suggest it should contain a statement of our responsibility to protect the environment, yet different people view environmental issues in different ways - paper bag or plastic bag, which is more "green"? You might be surprised by the answer, or you might not, it rather depends how you define "green".

And then the vital question arises. What possible use is any such code unless it can be enforced? In truth there is an answer to that rhetorical question because one can look at the Highway Code and find a set of guidance about how to drive with safety and consideration that has served the country well for many years and does not, directly, have the force of law. Some of the guidance in the Highway Code reflects the law but it is failure to comply with the law that is an offence not failure to comply with the Code itself. However, failure to comply with advisory aspects of the Code can be taken into account by a court when considering whether someone was driving without due care and attention. What started out as a guide to help those who might not understand the risks involved in driving has morphed over the years into a piece of quasi-legislation.

There might seem no harm in legislation saying, in effect, "please be nice to each other" but it's hard to believe it will stop there. It must be considered against the current background of law including the catch-all law against "anti-social behaviour". At present being rude to a hospital receptionist is probably not caught by that law (although it runs the risk of you having to wait longer to be seen by a nurse or doctor). But for how long will that be the case if there is a new Responsibilities Code?

Another theme running through the Green Paper is Human Rights. It is said over and again that we now have a Human Rights Act that defines our rights but not our responsibilities. It is pointed out, correctly, that one person's right is another person's responsibility. It is then asserted, incorrectly, that because our rights are now defined so our responsibilities should be codified. That is, to my mind, an illogical leap. If I have the right to privacy it follows automatically that you do not have the right to interfere with my privacy; the responsibility is implicit in the right it is not a separate thing, they are two sides of the same coin. Create a code of responsibilities and you risk creating free-standing responsibilities without correlative rights. The more detailed the code, the greater the chance of this happening.

We have seen a worrying trend over the last decade to create broad catch-all offences that are enforceable by fixed penalty notice and are far too open to interpretation by the day-glo jacketed minor functionary with power to issue such notices. The penalties cost but the additional cost and trouble of appealing against them is far greater. It contributes to a sense of the little people being put-upon by the State, where the easy targets are made to pay while real criminals escape with a warning. A Responsibilities Code is ripe with opportunities for this pattern to be widened.

At heart I am troubled by the very concept that the responsibilities of the little people to the State are constitutional matters. They are not, they are matters for the law. True constitutional issues are concerned with the power of the State not with how the little people comply with the manifestations of that power. They operate at a different level from the laws made pursuant to those constitutional powers. The State should exercise its powers through clearly defined laws so that the little people know that engaging in those defined activities risks incurring a penalty. The laws by which the State criminalises certain activities are not constitutional laws, they are laws made using powers the constitution gives the State. Our obligation to comply with those laws is also not a constitutional matter, it is merely the necessary consequence of the laws themselves.

The greatest danger is that a supposedly constitutional document will be used to promote party-political policies for which there is not universal support. Calling them constitutional matters will seek to lift those policies out of the realm of debate and make them immutable. The most obvious example in the Green Paper is the right to medical care free at the point of delivery. That is not a constitutional issue, it is a purely political issue. It seems to be an attempt to lock us into a State-run NHS until the end of time. Maybe that is wise, but there are arguments against it which should not be shut-out from debate and, indeed, which might become more persuasive to the little people in the future than they are today.

One thing which is fairly clear is that this exercise is looking to the next general election rather than looking to make good law. The government wants to present itself as the little people's friend and will pretend that this Green Paper and any resulting legislation have that effect. It seems to me that it is a confused and potentially dangerous move which, if recent history is anything to go by, will be riddled with provisions allowing for new law by Ministerial fiat.

Freedom of speech is not a right

The other day a Dutchman with a funny shaped head wanted to speak at the House of Lords, because he had been invited to do so. Apparently he has some involvement with a film that argues the spread of radical Islam isn't the most cuddly thing in history. Indeed, as I understand his position, he says it is a recipe for repression on a scale not seen in Europe since the 1930s when an Austrian who always missed a bit shaving and an avuncular Russian with a taste for genocide both got rather overexcited.

I can't say I disagree with the general thrust of his argument. Throughout history political movements based on selective interpretations of religious texts have gained power by picking on minorities. Identifying a pariah group is an effective way of welding together others who enjoy the feeling of superiority and readily give support to the leaders who massage their frail egos. No doubt some of the leaders genuinely believe they are carrying out their god's work, but something in my ever cynical mind thinks rather more are just happy to find an excuse to wield power. Over time it would not be surprising to find some in the first category reassessing their faith but continuing to pursue the cause because power itself is hard to relinquish; equally some in the latter camp might find they become persuaded by the religious texts when previously they considered them little more than an excuse for self-aggrandisement.

Whatever the motivations of the leaders the result is the same. They gain support by telling potential followers of their superiority over the sinful minorities and then strengthen that support by using such brutal measures against dissenters that followers dare not express doubts. If you are not with them you are against them, and if you are against them your life will not be worth living. All promises of power and happiness for followers soon melt in the dust as the need to suppress dissent in order to maintain power takes precedence over everything else.

Rule by militant Islamists follows this pattern today in every country they govern. There is nothing specifically Islamic about it, it is just a universal pattern of behaviour for idealist governments. The ideal trumps everything. If democracy does not embrace the ideal, they tinker with democracy because democracy must be faulty. If ancient rights and liberties do not sit comfortably with the ideal, those rights and liberties will be trimmed because they must be faulty. If existing customs do not embrace the ideal, they will be abrogated because they must be faulty. Everything gives way to the ideal, regardless of the consequences.

One might be tempted to think that the ideal itself is immutable throughout this process, yet nothing could be further from the truth. Ideals are re-written, updated, re-defined, modernised, re-interpreted and always expanded so as to extend the power of those relying on them as their basis for power. I believe this to be inevitable because once power is taken or used in order to advance an idealist ideology the power and the ideology become self-supporting. Having power is justified because it advances the ideal and the ideal is justified by the fact that it is exercised by those in power. Any hint that the grip on power might be challenged or that the ideal can extend to areas it has not yet touched will lead to an expansion of power and a tweaking of the ideology to secure that extension. Throughout the whole exercise the justification for power is not, and cannot be, the subject of rational debate. The justification of power is a higher authority - a god, a little red book, a tome written in the British Library, or some such.

I am not sure the Dutchman with the funny shaped head objects to radical Islamism because it is the latest example of this pattern of oppressive rule, although the little I have read about him suggests he does. Objections to his presence in this country were sufficiently persuasive for hapless Jacqui the so-called Home Secretary to find a moment in her busy schedule to turn from calculating how much she get the taxpayer to pay towards her domestic bills and sign a letter informing said Dutchman that he won't be allowed into the UK. The reason given was that his presence risked inciting racial and religious hatred.

This case made me think about the distinction between idealist politics and practical politics. It is possible to look at principles such as the right to free speech as being idealist in nature and in a way they are in as much as they appeal to a general principle. The difference, as I see it, between idealist and practical politics is that the former is concerned with meeting a pre-determined, top-down edict whereas the latter is concerned with what makes life comfortable for real people living real lives and is essentially a reactive, bottom-up process. In practical politics established ways of doing things can be discarded if they no longer provide a benefit, just as the cathode ray tube has now almost disappeared from view despite being a major part in the majority of British homes for forty or more years. Other technologies have supplanted it and provide a better product, so out goes the old fat telly and in comes the slim-line model. Flat tellies did not corner the market because the manufacturers said they had to. They were offered for sale alongside their plumper rivals and took over because the little people at the bottom decided to say hello to thin.

The so-called right to free speech is very much a bottom-up concept. It is a nonsense to think of a government decreeing that everyone must speak freely, the desire to speak freely exists in us all. We all have opinions, including opinions on subjects we actually know very little about. In the absence of a legal restriction we will express our opinions, so the right to free speech reflects something that is in our nature as human beings. Of course, these days it is sometimes seen as a right given by government (or, to be more precise, Parliament) because it is contained in the Human Rights Act. And when questions arise about the use of governmental discretion to suppress free speech the debate is sometimes quite legalistic and revolves around the wording of that Act. Yet this fails to acknowledge that we all speak freely unless prevented from doing so. The law does not give us free speech, our brains and mouths do that very nicely thank you. The law can only restrict the extent to which we can speak freely without fear of sanction. It is, in my view, fundamentally wrong to talk of "the right to" free speech. It is like talking of the right to sweat or the right to chew or the right to sneeze or the right to micturate. These are not rights, they are parts of the human condition, they are things we do naturally.

Free speech can be limited on either practical or ideological grounds. Indeed in many instances the limitation is the result of both practicalities and ideology. Debate cannot operate productively unless each speaker is allowed to make his contribution without undue interruptions. If we want to hear all sides of the argument it is necessary to stop other people speaking while one contributor is having his say. The practicalities of the exercise require freedom of speech to be curtailed in order to allow each case to be put. Practicalities also require all sides to have a fair amount of time to put their case. Ideology also comes into this. We generally accept that open debate is beneficial. That is an ideological proposition, yet when analysing why we hold that ideology we get back to the simple fact that we all hold opinions and human nature dictates that we wish to express them. The ideology comes from the bottom-up not the top down, and there is no conflict between ideology and practicalities in this example.

The law of defamation is somewhat different. If our words cause harm to another we step beyond the realm of mere speech. Untrue words can ruin an individual's life and they can ruin a business. The law steps in to penalise untruths that cause significant harm for essentially the same reason it steps in to penalise physical violence, the harmful consequences are unacceptable. It is not necessary for you to know that what you say is untrue, if it is in fact untrue and it causes the necessary harm the law of defamation hold your liable (subject to certain exceptions which I needn't deal with here). The law in this field is more top-down than bottom-up because it imposes a penalty even where the guilty party is sure he has told the truth. In the field of defamation, for all the many faults with the law as it stands, the truth is always a defence.

If the law is to impose a limitation on free speech it risks being brought into disrepute unless there is a solid ground for doing so. New laws over the last decade have sought to restrict free speech like never before. There are arguable justifications for some of these laws. For example, religious beliefs are at the heart of many people's lives and to find their religion being vilified is, no doubt, a matter of great distress to them. Similarly, discriminating against people because of their pigmentation (I refuse to fall for the "race" argument, it is nothing to do with race it is all to do with pigmentation) leads to them being treated unfairly and is not acceptable in a sophisticated country like the UK. Arguing for discrimination against those of dusky hue can, therefore, be seen to be sufficiently harmful that freedom of speech should be curtailed in that respect. Yet even though burning heretics and refusing work to someone of dark pigmentation are rightly unlawful, to take the argument one stage further and prevent debate on the subject is another matter entirely. There is no more justification for preventing such debate on the ground that it might encourage some people to barbecue the local vicar, than there is for allowing the debate so that the good sense of not engaging in a clerical conflagration can be spread to the widest possible audience.

What troubles me most about the new laws, as exemplified by hapless Jacqui's letter to the Dutchman with a mop on his head, is that they are based on idealism not practicalities. The ideal in question is the new religion known as "anti-racism". It causes boxing commentators to differentiate between a large dark-skinned man and a large pink-skinned man by the colour of their shorts when the difference between their pigmentation is far more apparent. It causes the word "black" to be reserved for use as an exclusive label based on pigmentation, to such an extent that I have witnessed a senior government minister frowning at the question "black or white coffee" and answering "with milk". It causes children in need of a loving home to be refused a suitable placement because the foster/adoptive parents are of different pigmentation to the child. It causes walking on eggshells in so many fields, and all of it serving no useful purpose. And, like so many shallow and narrow ideologies, there are victims of all pigmentations scattered along the way.

But more, there is also a far wider harmful consequence to the very people this muddled new religion claims to help. It creates formal legal divisions between people of different skin colour. It also creates a government-approved sense of victimisation even where there is no justification for it. Some argue that instilling a sense of victimhood in people of dark pigmentation is a deliberate consequence of the new religion because it makes them more likely to support the politicians who label them victims. I'm not convinced of this, I believe it is more likely to be an unintended consequence of unprincipled good intentions being taken too far.

It seems pretty obvious why the Dutchman was excluded. It was not because he wished to argue against the spread of radical Islamism. It was because he wished to argue against a religious-political movement which involves almost exclusively people of non-pink pigmentation. What a curious irony it is that preventing radical Islamists from exploding themselves in the tinned fruit aisle at Sainsburys requires CCTV cameras on every street and random searches by the police, while someone who wishes to argue against radical Islamism is excluded from the country in case his speech is construed as being less than chummy to any human grenades who happen to be a bit brown.

Many have commented that this issue is an example of our current government introducing thought crime onto the statute book. They have a point. I prefer to look at the way the legislation was formulated and describe it as ill-thought crime.

Much ado about hanky-panky

I can understand why those who work as pimps should be targeted by the law. Some of them are pretty harmless and give their girls a bit of protection in case a punter gets threatening or refuses to pay, but many extort a large percentage of the girls' earnings under threat of violence. Making it illegal to traffic people for prostitution is also a nasty business, often involving coercion of girls into a trade they had no intention or desire to engage in. Quite rightly both activities are unlawful already. Today our hapless Home Secretary announced plans to make it illegal to use the services of a prostitute if she is operated by a pimp or has been trafficked into the UK for the purpose of prostitution. To make matters worse, the offence is committed whether or not the punter knows of the pimp or the trafficking. It is a most bizarre proposal. To make it all the more bizarre, the maximum penalty will be a fine of £1,000 thereby putting it on a par with other serious crimes such as failing to pay the television tax and smoking in a pub.

What intrigues me is how the offence can be proved. At the moment paying for consensual sexual services is not illegal, if the proposed new law is brought in that will still be the case but there will be an exception where the prostitute is managed by a pimp or has been trafficked. On the face of it, therefore, it will be necessary for the prosecution to prove three things: (i) that sexual services were provided, (ii) that money changed hands or was due to change hands in return for those services and (iii) the provider of those services has a pimp or has been trafficked. In theory the law could be framed so as to presume that every person selling sex falls into the special categories, in which case only points (i) and (ii) will have to be proved and the defence will then have to disprove the third point, but that is unlikely to survive a challenge under the Human Rights Act because it imposes an impossible burden of proof on a defendant.

Undoubtedly a small number of cases will be easy for the prosecution because the girl will give evidence herself about how she operated, although I wouldn't put any money on an appreciable number of pimped girls doing this. The very nature of most pimps is severely discouraging towards anyone attempting to ruin their business. Furthermore, many of the girls need the money even if they don't like the way their pimp treats them and will prefer to keep earning a living rather than give evidence against a punter they don't know and will probably never see again and thereby run the risk of exposing their pimp who, in turn, will expose them to a right good smacking.

Perhaps the most obvious situation in which the proposed new law will be used is when a brothel is raided and a number of illegal immigrants are found in close proximity to pale and sweaty middle managers in a state of undress save for a small intimate rubber item. It might well be possible to persuade a court to infer that the girls have been trafficked if no other explanation for their presence in the country is forthcoming, but I doubt that it will be as easy as the Home Secretary might wish.

The biggest problem the prosecution will have if it seeks to rely on inference rather than direct proof is that the offence is one to which ignorance of the true facts is no defence. In other words, the punter only commits an offence if the girl was pimped or trafficked and then he cannot excuse himself by saying he did not know she was pimped or trafficked. Since the evil being legislated against is the pimping or trafficking and the punter would be innocent of any crime if the girl is not pimped or trafficked, establishing this element of the offence is particularly important. It is all the more important where the defendant will be condemned even where he has no knowledge and no means of establishing whether the girl is pimped or trafficked. For the prosecution to say "it is no excuse that he does not know" is not very appealing when the case they present shows they do not know either.

On another practical note there must be doubt whether the police would be prepared to devote substantial resources to investigating the background of a prostitute where only her punter is charged and the maximum penalty is a £1,000 fine. It would be rather different where an alleged pimp or trafficker is in the dock, but to target resources at a middle aged saddo just to keep Jacqui Smith and simple Harriet happy does not seem at all sensible.

To secure a conviction for a criminal offence usually requires proof both that the accused person did something and that he had a particular state of mind when he did it. To be guilty of theft you must have the intention to deprive someone of property permanently, to be guilty of murder you must have the intention to cause serious harm, to be guilty of handling stolen goods you must know or believe them to be stolen, and so the list goes on. Merely doing something without having a guilty mind is not usually enough. There are exceptions, many exceptions, but I cannot think of one in which the thing which makes conduct illegal is outside the control of the defendant. For example, driving in excess of the speed limit or with more than the permitted level of alcohol in your system both involve criminalising something entirely within the control of the defendant even if he had no intention to speed or to be over the limit. Before killing an animal of a protected species someone can find out whether the object of his brutal desire is indeed of a protected species. I might be wrong (it is many years since I practised in the criminal courts except on planning and regulatory matters) but I cannot think of any example of the law criminalising conduct because of a state of background facts which the defendant neither knows nor has any reasonable prospect of being able to discover.

A very obvious situation comes to mind which illustrates just how bizarre this proposal is. Assume two pasty middle managers visit Madame Fifi's Sauna and Hanky-Panky Parlour. Two girls are available, one middle manager goes to Room 1 with Chantelle the other takes Tatiana to Room 2. In burst the police and both men are arrested. It turns out that Chantelle is an illegal immigrant from Russia and was forced into prostitution after being smuggled to the UK by the Russian Mafia. Tatiana is actually Joyce Stubbins from Canvey Island and works two days a week to save for a new caravan. Each man has done exactly the same thing. Neither of them has any means of knowing the background of the girl who was to be the temporary object of his fleshy lusts. Yet one is guilty and the other is not. It really is a complete nonsense, an absolute lottery, arbitrary and ill thought out law at its very worst.

And what will it achieve? How many more pimps and traffickers will be identified and prosecuted as a result? Of course there is no need even to waste time asking that question because the answer is a big fat zero. If the desire is to stop men using prostitutes for fear of losing out in the lottery draw it might have some effect, but it will only do so at the expense of imposing a ridiculous, unfair and random law.

Making the criminal law used to be a serious business involving careful consideration of the consequences the proposed law might be expected to have. These days we have Jacqui Smith and simple Harriet thrusting the contents of their combined half-brain on the populace without regard to anything other than the desire to prove just how very shallow they are.

What is a "Human Rights Lawyer"?

Whenever some nutty proposition is debated on my radio there seems to be a "human rights lawyer" on hand to pontificate on the effect of said proposition on human rights. I wonder what expertise they require in order to be called a "human rights lawyer" and to get airtime on the BBC.

Let us take a different case to examine the principle. Say someone has won substantial damages to compensate for injuries suffered at work. In case the radio audience does not know how the law operates in relation to industrial injuries it is common for a lawyer with particular experience in such cases to explain it. Not every lawyer is qualified to do so because that area of law involves concepts and procedures which do not arise in other fields. Similarly, if a question arises about why someone was given a particular length of prison sentence, a lawyer specialising in criminal law might be interviewed because he has the necessary specialist knowledge to guide the audience through the rat's maze of sentencing statutes and guidelines.

The problem with human rights law is that everyone needs to know about it in order to be able practice law in any field. Even the more esoteric areas, such as shipping and international electronic trading law, are affected by the Human Rights Act. Having said that, it is the case that some lawyers spend all their time putting forward claims based on alleged breaches of the Human Rights Act, these are the self-defined "human rights lawyers" we hear on our radios, see on our televisions and read about in our newspapers. But who are they and what makes them suitable spokespeople?

The first thing we can see about them is that they are the very same people who lobbied for the European Convention on Human Rights to be introduced into English law in the first place. It's quite a little gravy train. You lobby for a law to be brought in and achieve a public profile by doing so. When that law is brought in you are first in the queue for the work because of your self-promotion during the lobbying process. You know all along that one aspect of the new law is that Legal Aid will always be available for cases carrying the "human rights" tag and, abracadabra, you're coining it in until the trump of doom.

The second thing we see, as observed above, is that they are almost all dedicated self-publicists. Not for them just turning up at court, arguing the case and going back to the office to prepare the next one. Oh no, they feed on the bright lights of publicity and must let everyone know of their success or bleat about the oppressive, public school, old-boy-network establishment which caused their defeat. This does not make them experts, it just makes them loud.

Thirdly, they are almost all dedicated socialists usually of the champagne variety. Many, such as the absurd Harriet Harman, enter mainstream politics and show their true colours by introducing policies that cut to the heart of one of the most essential human right of all - the right to live your life without the government sticking its nose into your business every 5 minutes. They do so because they believe that the government's primary role is to define how people should live. Laws are passed to make that style of life compulsory and, as a necessary consequence, to give government the power to make sure we are all doing as directed. In their minds this does not impinge on our human rights because the defined lifestyle is the only right way to behave. If we are found not to be behaving as we should we are damaging ourselves and others and it is the job of government to step in to protect the human rights of those suffering through our wickedness.

Fourthly, the law they claim to know about is set out in a number of general principles - the right to life, the right to liberty and security, the right to freedom of expression and so on. These can mean just about anything depending on ones point of view. Some restriction of meaning is provided in the Convention itself and by judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, but not much, even the most closely defined is still incredibly woolly. Anyone claiming to be a "human rights lawyer" is simply putting forward their opinion of how the general principles should apply. Generally speaking they cannot say how those principles will apply because that cannot be predicted with accuracy. Their opinion is no more expert than that of any other lawyer who approaches the matters from a different perspective. They are hardly likely to suggest that the Act will be applied in a way that will restrict the number of cases they can bring at public expense.

Next time you hear one of the BBC's tame Human Rights Lawyers pontificating, bear in mind that you are almost certainly listening to a political statement not a legal analysis.