September 11, 2013
The UN special investigator’s shock over bedroom tax exposes the low status social rights are afforded in Britain
by Giles Fraser
It really comes to something when the UN special investigator on housing, more familiar with shanty towns and favelas, has expressed herself so fiercely on the subject of the UK bedroom tax. “I was very shocked to hear how people really feel abused in their human rights by this decision and why – being so vulnerable – they should pay for the cost of the economic downturn, which was brought about by the financial crisis,” said Raquel Rolnik.
But what has rights got to do with housing? In legal terms, the whole idea of social rights – the right to adequate healthcare, to education, to a decent standard of living – is given a quite different status in different countries. In South Africa, for instance, social rights were incorporated into the constitution, post-apartheid. But in this country, the legal force of social rights, such as they are, comes from an international treaty from 1976 which is binding internationally but not binding in terms of domestic law. In effect, binding internationally means diddly squat. As a joint parliamentary committee in 2003 insisted, this means that vulnerable people have no access to domestic courts to redress and grievance that they may have under international “social rights”. This is of a piece with the consistent refusal of this and previous governments to introduce a bill of rights such as South Africa’s. Still less, one that protects the right to housing, education, welfare, etc.
The question is: should we? In 2008, the same joint committee of parliament advised that we ought to have a bill of rights, with social rights included. They were understandably wary of this provision given that housing decisions ought primarily to be the bailiwick of parliament and not the courts. The same anxiety was expressed by the coalition’s recent commission on a bill of rights that reported in December last year. But as Justice Albie Sachs told the joint committee on its visit to South Africa, a country that does not include social and economic rights in some form in its legal constitution has “given up on aspiration”. Too bloody right.
Source: The Guardian
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