Rights and responsibilities bill is all wrong

Rights and responsibilities bill is all wrong

By Marcel Berlins

When the Queen's speech failed to mention the government's long-trailed plans for a "bill of rights and responsibilities", I felt a short burst of relief that this misguided measure had finally been laid to rest. After all, had there not been, a few weeks before, what was generally described as a cabinet revolt against the bill?

Alas, last week's Daily Mail put me right. Jack Straw, the justice secretary, made it clear in an interview with the paper that he was still committed to the idea and intended pursuing it.

It is difficult to know what to make of Straw at the moment. I think he does genuinely believe in the goodness and positive impact of the Human Rights Act, yet his defence of it, not least in the Daily Mail interview, has been muted. He did timidly point out that the act was being blamed for problems which were not its fault, and that people didn't notice when it did good, but his main thrust was that he understood the concerns of Mail readers about the act.

He somehow failed to point out that the Mail readers' antagonism was largely fuelled by the paper's reporting, which concentrated sensationally on those few examples where the act has been shown to reach objectionable or silly results.

Perhaps Straw has veered towards Mail-think, which would be sad. Whatever Straw really believes, a British "bill of rights and responsibilities" is not an answer. Adding responsibilities to rights will not create a "balance" as he claims; it will create a nonsense. The basic flaw is that rights and responsibilities do not logically belong to the same family. They are different animals. They cannot be set off against, or complement, one another. It makes no sense to say: "Here is a right, let's have a responsibility to balance it." If you have a legal right to something and you are denied it, you can go to court and demand it be restored, or that you are compensated.

But most responsibilities or duties are not of that ilk: they are more akin to statements of desirable behaviour by good citizens. That is not something the courts can, or should, be asked to rule upon.

It is difficult to think of responsibilities which are not the law but which lend themselves to being enforced in the courts. A bill that purports to balance rights and responsibilities can only be an illogical, unworkable, incoherent mess. Let Straw and the government admit it and go on to more important matters.