Human Rights: Common Values, Common Sense Campaign

The Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) has launched a campaign to encourage police and other public sector workers to adopt a common-sense approach to human rights. The DCA and Government ministers will work with a range of organisations, including police, probation, education and health, to ensure common-sense solutions to human rights problems.

In his speech when launching the campaign, Lord Falconer highlighted that there have been problems with how human rights and the Human Rights Act have been interpreted. He emphasised that the rights of the individual have to be balanced against the rights of the community and that, in the vast majority of cases of conflict between rights, common sense tells us the answer. He highlighted a number of recent cases, one involving the police, where initially common sense did not appear to have prevailed. He said that it was part of his responsibility and that of the DCA to make sure staff in key frontline services are properly informed about the legislation and how it is meant to work. Lord Falconer’s speech can be viewed in full at http://www.dca.gov.uk/speeches/2007/sp070209.htm

Two DCA documents have also been published and these were featured in an article in the October 2006 Digest. These are Human rights: Human lives – a handbook for public authorities and Making sense of human rights: a short introduction, designed for officials in public authorities to assist them in working with the Human Rights Act 1998 and to raise their awareness of human rights.

These can be found at http://www.dca.gov.uk/peoples-rights/human-rights/pdf/hr-handbook-introduction.pdf and http://www.dca.gov.uk/peoples-rights/human-rights/publications.htm