Meeting of the Parliament 08 December 2022
I am grateful to Christina McKelvie for lodging the motion.
In 1948, with the memories of genocide and the atrocities of the Nazis still fresh in their consciousness, people from across the globe came together with one simple but far from easy task—to have acknowledged in legislatures, such as this one, around the world, an inalienable and immutable fact of human life, that all humans are “born free and equal”. It took an enormous amount of willpower, hard work and hope to create that Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which we celebrate today, as well as the defenders who back it up day in and day out.
Reflecting on the declaration, Eleanor Roosevelt, the first chairperson of the UN Commission on Human Rights, and the heart and driving force behind it, said:
“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home—so close and so small they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are in the world of the individual person”.
That epitomises what the universal declaration has done for us all. It has given individuals the agency to uphold their human rights in courts, which has created profound ramifications across the globe, not least on our shores. In Scotland, the UDHR has shone a light on and put a stop to horrific practices such as unlawful detention in our care homes and degrading conditions in our prisons, and introduced legal representation during police questioning.
Just as it is important to celebrate the huge progress that we have made, it is equally, if not more, important to acknowledge how far we have yet to go. This year, we have witnessed, in their most extreme forms, the dark forces that seek to destroy our human rights. To name but a few, we have witnessed a despotic leader seek to invade and snatch sovereignty from Ukraine, a world cup football stadium built on the deaths of hundreds of migrant workers, and China’s continued genocide towards the Uyghur people.
We have also witnessed the erosion of our human rights much closer to home. As has been mentioned, the Conservative Government is currently proposing to scrap the current Human Rights Act 1998 and replace it with a bill of rights. If such legislation passes, it will have huge ramifications for individual human rights in our country. We should make no mistake that that bill seeks to undermine the same fundamental principle of human rights that Eleanor Roosevelt and dozens more fought hard to enshrine all those years ago.
The Bill of Rights Bill would limit the ability of people in prisons to bring forward human rights claims, make it even harder for people to seek asylum and make it significantly more difficult to bring human rights cases to courts. What is more, that bill has the potential to undermine the very parameters of our competences in this Parliament. That is nothing short of a disgrace to our history, our traditions and, most importantly, the people whom we serve. Suffice it to say that the Liberal Democrats in Scotland and the rest of the UK condemn the proposal whole-heartedly, and I am heartened to hear similar condemnations in this place.
I find it incumbent on me to point out that it is not just from Westminster that Scottish human rights are sometimes threatened. It has been revealed by research, which was undertaken by my party, that more than a dozen councils in Scotland are using Hikvision cameras. That equipment is linked to Chinese surveillance and facial recognition technology that has been used to persecute the Uyghur people. The cameras’ continued use risks not only funding an oppressive regime but endangering the human rights and civil liberties of our citizens.
That is part of a pattern of the Scottish Government being too complacent when it comes to human rights. As we have heard several times, it has been more than a year since the Government was advised that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is workable into Scots law under the remit of devolved power, but our children are no closer to the protections that it is within the reach of this chamber to offer them. This Government has form on children’s rights.