BASW UK responds to Bill of Rights call for evidence

The UK Government has laid their ‘Bill of Rights’ Bill which is due to have its Second Reading in the House of Commons on Monday 12th September. The Bill revokes and replaces the 1998 Human Rights Act.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights in the UK Parliament is undertaking legislative scrutiny on the Bill, and has invited evidence from organisations and individuals with an interest in the Bill. BASW UK has submitted evidence to the Committee on parts of the Bill that impact social work and social workers.

In our submission, we highlighted to the Committee that social workers have a range of legal responsibilities both to adults (mental capacity, severe mental health conditions, the assessment, provision and review of adult services and adult safeguarding) and children (child safeguarding, children who are looked after, the approval and support of foster carers, adoption and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children). Given the vulnerability of many individuals in these groups, adherence to, and the application of human rights, is central to the practice of social work.

The Bill of Rights contains a series of new proposals, including:

• Requiring courts, in deciding whether to apply an existing positive obligation, to give “great weight to the need to avoid” various things such as requiring the police to protect rights of criminals and undermining the ability of public authorities to make decisions regarding the allocation fo their resources. This means that public authorities could refuse to uphold a persons rights on the basis of affordability.
• Replacing the current duty in the Human Rights Act that public authorities should act compatibly with human rights. This means that unless specified in legislation, public authorities may not have to act compatiblty with human rights.

The Bill of Rights represents a clear and unequivocal rowing back on human rights. Anyone, or any family or friend, or our own future children or grandchildren, might need human rights protections because of issues of mental health, mental capacity, or adult social care. Families might need protections against over-intrusive state intervention. In short, human rights are everyone’s issue.

For further reading on the Bill, we recommend the British Institute of Human Rights’ evidence sent to the Joint Committee on Human Rights