Prisoners, terrorists and Gypsies should be handed MORE human rights, declares equality quango - Daily Mail

Prisoners, Gypsies, terrorists and union activists routinely have their human rights abused, a highly controversial report will claim today.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has spent at least £150,000 of taxpayers’ money publishing a review into how public bodies safeguard people’s rights.

The left-wing quango, led by former Labour politician Trevor Phillips, has concluded that ‘more could be done to improve human rights protections of some,’ which also included vulnerable people in care homes and victims of crime.
Under siege: Police and bailiffs arrive to evict Travellers from their camp at Dale Farm in Essex last year

But it contentiously calls for more rights for groups that include criminals, Travellers and Gypsies on illegal camps, and suspected extremists.

Some of the EHRC’s conclusions will spark anger because they are in defiance of the rulings of law made in Britain’s courts and decisions made in Parliament.

In one of its most controversial findings, the report, due to be published this morning, states that prisoners should be given the right to vote. In February last year, MPs voted to continue to deny inmates a chance to vote in elections despite a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.

But the report, called How Fair Is Britain?, states: ‘Human rights... apply to everyone, even unpopular minorities.

‘Offenders may be punished with a prison sentence, which means a denial of their right to liberty. Treating the right to vote as a privilege to be removed for bad behaviour is a disproportionate interference with a fundamental right.’

The report also states that Travellers and Gypsies had no choice but to occupy sites illegally because local authorities had undermined their rights by failing to provide land for caravans. Evicting them therefore contravened Article 8 of the Human Rights Act – the right to a private and family life.

‘Gypsy and Traveller communities face a shortage of caravan sites,’ the report claims. ‘This means it is difficult for them to practise their traditional way of life.’

It echoed a claim by the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe last week that October’s eviction of 80 families illegally camped at Dale Farm, near Basildon, Essex, was an outrage against human rights.

Tory MP Philip Davies said: ‘I don’t really think the commission needed to spend tens of thousands of pounds telling us we need more human rights – that’s the reason for its existence. It seems a complete waste of money.

‘In many cases the people who the commission says are not getting human rights have forfeited them.

‘Do prisoners think of the human rights of the victims of their crime? Do travellers think of the human rights of those whose land they illegally camp on? Not for a second.

‘These are the only people who seem to have rights, not the decent law-abiding people whose rights seem to be ignored time after time.’

The document, which took more than two years to compile, also criticises Britain’s terror laws.

Currently, those suspected of terrorism-related offences can be held without charge for up to 14 days. ‘The EHRC has argued that the maximum period of pre-charge detention should be four days,’ states the report.

And only those who have committed terror-related crimes should be subject to Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIM) – Government orders which place strict restrictions on terror suspects. The report said that TPIMs ‘violate long-held principles of civil liberties, including the prohibition on punishment for what people might do rather than what they have done’.

Professor Geraldine Van Bueren, an EHRC commissioner, said: ‘Human rights should not only get our attention when people we might not like try to use them. Nor should the value of human rights be limited to when we see what happens to people in other countries when these rights do not exist.’

The EHRC report also criticised the ‘detailed rules for holding a ballot’ among members of a union threatening industrial action which meant it was ‘too easy’ for bosses to challenge strikes as unlawful.

The report also highlights its own study which found the treatment of vulnerable elderly people in some care homes was so appalling that pensioners were left ‘wanting to die’.

How Fair Is Britain - Equality and Human Rights Commission