Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today. I apologise for not providing written testimony in advance of the meeting—unfortunately, the invitation did not allow me sufficient time to produce a submission—but I am happy to provide my comments in written form after today’s meeting.
I am particularly delighted to speak with you today because, almost exactly six years ago, I and a group of my students at the University of Glasgow, where I was teaching at the time, released a report entitled, “Scottish Parliament Committees’ Perspective on Human Rights”. The report was commissioned by the cross-party group on human rights, with a view to examining how all the Parliament’s committees included human rights issues in their deliberations. Despite the limited timeframe for the report, it concluded that
“the evidence for the period”
of study
“reveals a widespread disregard of the normative and institutional framework for conceptualizing and analyzing human rights issues.”
It went on to say
“Although there is no evidence … that this is deliberate most Committees did not seize the opportunity to imbue human rights in their respective field of activities.”
The report called on the Parliament to move human rights to the Equal Opportunities Committee and to rename the committee to reflect its new mandate. Although I am not assigning any influence whatsoever to that one small report six years ago, I am nonetheless gratified that that suggestion has been implemented. The creation of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee represents a substantial commitment to embedding human rights in the work of the Scottish Parliament and across Scotland more broadly.
I am not a parliamentary or constitutional expert; most of my work focuses on how international institutions and other actors address human rights issues, and it frequently examines the domestic-international interface. For the most part, my comments will reflect that. Other witnesses will reflect on the intricacies of committee action and the constitutional mandate of this committee. I begin instead by reiterating the potentially transformative nature of the creation of this committee, and I encourage you to use its potential not only to scrutinise the work of other committees and to routinise the consideration of human rights throughout Parliament but as a platform to embed within Scottish society the positive values of human rights.
I have lived in Scotland for more than 13 years. In that time, it has been clear to me that Scotland as a whole appears to have a somewhat different approach from other parts of the United Kingdom to the issue of human rights. The open and welcoming response to Syrian refugees in Scotland exemplifies that approach, and the very positive words and actions on the part of the Scottish Government and parliamentarians contribute to it.
However, that approach is obviously not uniform throughout society, and it is subject to significant regression. We have seen such regression in Westminster over a long period of time, with the proposals to withdraw from the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and from the European convention on human rights and the European Court of Human Rights, and to replace the Human Rights Act 1998 with something that is sure to provide lesser protection for human rights. The committee should be an outspoken positive voice against such reductions in human rights protection, not only in Scotland but in the UK as a whole, given that any changes in Westminster will inevitably have an effect in Scotland.
In that regard, I have a few specific recommendations. First, the committee must be vigilant in scrutinising the effects of future proposals from Westminster on human rights protections in Scotland, including the effects of withdrawing from the EU charter of fundamental rights as part of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Most of those rights are contained in other documents that will continue to apply to the UK and Scotland, but any reduction in protection should be clarified, and plans to mitigate such a reduction should be formulated.
Secondly, there has been much discussion about, and political commitment to, the direct incorporation in Scots law of human rights law such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Direct incorporation, to the extent that it is possible, would help to mitigate any attempts by Westminster to undermine human rights protection in Scotland. The committee should be proactive in investigating those possibilities.
Thirdly, the committee can play a significant role in developing scrutiny of the Scottish Government’s submissions to the United Nations universal periodic review of the UK. The most recent submission was robust and positive, but the committee can continue to engage with the process by considering the outcome of the UN Human Rights Council’s review and how the Scottish Parliament might respond.
Fourthly, and more broadly, the committee can play a role in following up findings, reports and recommendations from UN treaty bodies and evaluating the implications for human rights practice and protection in Scotland. In addition, it could potentially send reports and representatives to treaty bodies.
Fifthly, the committee can engage proactively with international organisations and actors such as other Parliaments to draw on best practice in human rights globally to inform its work and the work of other committees.
Sixthly, the committee can initiate inquiries into specific human rights issues, including those that span the domestic-international divide, and those that may relate directly to reserved powers but which nonetheless may have direct consequences for Scotland. For example, the conflict in Syria and the broader situation of refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean has a direct impact on Scotland, given its open and generous response in welcoming Syrian refugees. More generally, the UK’s response to situations such as the Syrian crisis is of direct concern to many citizens in Scotland, who may not feel that their concerns are adequately represented in Westminster. The committee could therefore become another voice in broader discussions in the UK on how to address key international challenges.
Seventhly, the committee can welcome and support initiatives to directly protect individuals from human rights violations internationally. That might include making strong statements in support of welcoming refugees. It might also mean engaging with initiatives such as the Scottish human rights defender fellowship, which is funded by the Scottish Government and which will initially involve human rights defenders coming to the University of Dundee for a period of respite, research and interaction with human rights organisations. I am sure that those people would welcome the opportunity to speak with the committee and others in the Parliament about their concerns, and the provision of such a forum would be an important show of solidarity.
Finally, I appreciate the inclusion of academic voices in the discussion of human rights, and I urge the committee to draw on the significant resources that lie in Scottish universities and elsewhere to support its work. I am currently spearheading an initiative to create a Scottish centre for human rights, which would facilitate such interaction. However, even in the absence of such a formal centre, there are many academics in Scotland who are willing and able to support the committee’s important work.
I encourage the committee to be proactive in mobilising public opinion in support of the broadest array of human rights—civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights—and in contributing to public discourse in Scotland and beyond on human rights issues. That may require thinking beyond a narrow understanding of a mandate that focuses only on scrutinising legislation and moving to a more holistic understanding of positive support for human rights.