Policy briefings and research reports

Also see our press releases, comments and media briefings.

BIHR delivers human rights victory for older and disabled people in care homes

BIHR is delighted to announce that hundreds of thousands of vulnerable older and disabled people in care homes across the country will soon be protected against human rights violations - including abuse, neglect, and unfair evictions - following a Government amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill, passed on Thursday 22 May 2008.

This amendment - which BIHR lobbied for – closes a legal ‘loophole’ which meant that care homes run by private or voluntary sector organisations, but contracted by public authorities, were not covered by the Human Rights Act 1998.

BIHR has been at the forefront of efforts to close this ‘loophole’, working closely with a variety of other organisations. Since early 2007, we have convened a group of more than 15 age, disability and human rights organisations to explore legislative solutions, and place pressure on the Government to tackle this issue.

Our important role was recognised in the House of Lords debate. Baroness Thornton, who moved the amendment on behalf of the Government, singled out BIHR and the Equality and Human Rights Commission for special praise in keeping this issue on the agenda. The full text of the debate can be found here.

Click here to read the joint press release issued on 20 May 2008 by BIHR, Liberty, JUSTICE, Help the Aged and Age Concern.

Click here to read the latest parliamentary briefing prepared by BIHR, Liberty, JUSTICE, Help the Aged and Age Concern.

Click here to read BIHR’s statement in response to the Governments decision to close the Public Authority ‘loophole’.

Report by BIHR: The Human Rights Act – Changing Lives

Seven years on from the introduction of the Human Rights Act, a report from the British Institute of Human Rights challenges the perception that the law is being used solely by criminals or celebrities.

The Human Rights Act - Changing Lives shows how people from different backgrounds are using human rights arguments to challenge shoddy treatment from public services without having to go to court. Download the report here.

The Criminal Justice & Immigration Bill: how do human rights relate to the proposed extension of an offence of incitement to hatred to protect lesbian and gay people?

This Bill is currently going through Parliament and in the Commons MPs approved an addition to the law: a new offence of incitement to homophobic hatred. Some people have raised concerns that this could infringe people’s right to freedom of speech or to religious expression. BIHR has produced a note giving background on these human rights issues and how they relate to the proposed new offence. See here

Human rights, a tool for change

This report is part of the Economic Social and Research Council (ESRC) Seminar Series. It draws on presentations made at an event on 31 October 2007 by BIHR Director Katie Ghose and Professor Stuart Weir, Director of the Democratic Audit, on the unmet potential of human rights to be used as a tool for positive social change in the UK.

Read the report

Our submission to the Discrimination Law Review

Our response emphasises the Government's failure to locate proposals for a single Equality Bill in the new integrated human rights and equality agenda. We argue that this failure has contributed to the low ambitions in the green paper.

Read our submission to the consultation

The British Bill of Rights debate

Our response focuses on the context of the current ‘Bill of Rights’ debate and the type of debate we believe is required before more robust legal protection of human rights can be achieved in Britain. We believe that the pressing issue is how to embed the Human Rights Act and achieve the culture of respect for human rights it was meant to inspire. Once the Human Rights Act achieves traction in this way across society, we can then have a positive, meaningful debate about how best to enhance the human rights protection it affords.

Read our submission to the Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry into a British Bill of Rights

Read our submission to the JUSTICE Bill of Rights consultation

Economic, social and cultural rights - a crucial anti-poverty tool

It has long been recognised that civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights are indivisible and interdependent. Yet our Human Rights Act focuses mainly on civil and political rights. We believe that making economic, social and cultural rights part of our domestic law will strengthen our human rights framework and promote use of these rights as a tool for tackling poverty and social exclusion.

Read our response to the Government's draft periodic report to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Our submission to the Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry into the human rights of adults with learning disabilities

BIHR knows from its direct experience of working with organisations in the public sector and the voluntary and community sector that people with learning disabilities, both adults and children, are often denied their human rights. It is essential that learning disabled people, their family members, friends and carers, know their rights and can claim them. We also see the wider potential of human rights ideas and human rights approaches for learning disabled people to claim more power and control over their own lives. In addition to individuals acting to claim their rights, we also see the potential for organisations to behave differently - not only taking steps to avoid the worst human rights breaches but also to fully promote and fulfil the human rights of learning disabled people in a way that enables them to flourish as human beings.

Read our submission

Dignity in care

As part of a broader dignity in care campaign the Department of Health has announced a number of new initiatives including a £67 million grant to ‘place dignity and respect at the heart for caring for older people’, a network of local dignity champions and a practice guide.

Read BIHR’s response to the announcement.

Older people and human rights

Older people have the same human rights as everyone else in our society, yet they often find them ignored. As people over 50 are an extremely diverse group, they will experience infringements of their rights in different ways and at different stages of their lives. This briefing looks at how human rights relate to older people.

BIHR’s response to the Department for Constitutional Affairs’ Human Rights review

In 2006, the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs announced the conclusions of his department’s review of the Human Rights Act. He ruled out repeal or amendment of the Act and instead promised better guidance, training for officials and a new ministerial group to make sure that the law is ‘properly applied’.

BIHR welcomed the conclusions of the DCA review.

Don’t axe the Act

Faced with the horrors of extreme crime and terror the Human Rights Act has been an easy target for some commentators to attack. But it is simply not true to say that those who have benefited most from the protection of the Act have been criminals and terrorists.

BIHR has drawn on our experience of working with the voluntary and public sectors to produce a briefing tackling some of the myths circulating about human rights, highlighting how the Act has helped transform ordinary people’s daily lives. We strongly oppose calls to scrap or weaken the Act, and urge anyone who is interested in the debate to read our briefing.

BIHR parliamentary briefing for Equality Bill debates

BIHR sent a parliamentary briefing to MPs in time for the second reading of the Equality Bill in the House of Commons in 2005.

BIHR strongly supported the creation of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) through the Equality Bill. We believe that if the CEHR uses its powers and duties to the full, this independent new body will do much to protect and promote ordinary people’s human rights in the UK.

Earlier debates on the Bill in the House of Lords highlighted the problem presented by the narrow definition of ‘public authority’ in the Human Rights Act. BIHR urged the Government to take action and a number of MPs raised this issue in the debate. Paul Burstow MP said:

‘Thanks to the way the courts have interpreted the meaning of “public authorities” under section 6 of the Act, when one crosses the threshold of a privately run care home, one enters a twilight zone, where an out of sight, out of mind culture of abuse can become the accepted norm. Care homes are places where human rights can be denied. There is what the British Institute of Human Rights calls a “protection gap”, into which older vulnerable people can fall.’

Read our briefing.

Read the full Hansard record of the House of Commons debate.

Responses to Equalities Review calls for evidence

Trevor Phillips is chairing the Government’s fundamental review of equality of opportunity. The Equalities Review will identify the interaction between socio-economic inequalities and the position of disadvantaged groups, and propose changes – both to the legislative framework and more widely – that can transform people's life chances.

In November 2005, BIHR and the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at LSE submitted a joint response to a call for evidence from Trevor Phillips’ Equalities Review. The response brought together different perspectives on equality and human rights in the UK: BIHR working at grass roots level and the Centre for the Study of Human Rights as academics monitoring the law. The response argues that there is a powerful case for using a human rights framework to tackle discrimination and inequality.

Read our submission.

In June 2006 we wrote to the Equalities Review, setting out the views of BIHR on the Equalities Review Interim Report and focusing on how human rights should be included in the Final Report, based on our grassroots experience of the increasing value assigned to human rights by equalities advocates and practitioners.

Read our letter.

Response to Government White Paper

In 2004 BIHR submitted a response to the Government’s White Paper Fairness for All: A Commission for Equality and Human Rights. The response was drafted on the basis of BIHR’s research report Something for Everyone and the experience of establishing and running the Community Outreach Programme. BIHR welcomed the proposal to establish an integrated commission but raised concerns about the adequacy of the human rights related functions and powers of the new body.

Read our response.

Submissions to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR)

In February 2007, we responded to a call for evidence from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, regarding the human rights of older people in healthcare. Our submission draws on our particular experience developing and delivering human rights supports for organisations in direct contact with disadvantaged and socially excluded people. Read our submission.

In January 2007, BIHR responded to a call for evidence from the Joint Committee on Human Rights concerning the meaning of ‘public authority’ under the Human Rights Act. This follows on from our 2002 submission (see below). Read our 2007 submission.

In 2003 BIHR submitted evidence to the parliamentary JCHR on the ‘structure, functions and powers of a human rights commission’. BIHR supports the view that an integrated human rights and equality commission is the preferable option and made several recommendations to the Committee on the possible make-up of this body. Read the submission.

In 2002 BIHR submitted evidence to the JCHR’s ‘Inquiry into the Meaning of Public Authority under the Human Rights Act’. In its submission BIHR called for a more generous interpretation of 'public authority' by the courts and, additionally, legislative change. Read the evidence.

In May 2002, BIHR submitted evidence to the JCHR’s ‘Inquiry into Derogations from Convention Rights’ in which concern was expressed about the proportionality of the Government’s derogation from the European Convention on Human Rights in response to the events of September 11. Read an edited summary of Mediation: A Tool for Mainstreaming Human Rights? in the Autumn 2001 BIHR Brief.

As part of its inquiry into the ‘need for a Human Rights Commission’ in July 2001, BIHR submitted evidence to the JCHR in which it was proposed that one of the powers of the Commission should be to assist individuals in resolving their complaints through mediation where appropriate. To read an edited summary of Mediation: A Tool for Mainstreaming Human Rights? in the Autumn 2001 BIHR Brief click here.

Read the full reports of the JCHR.

Something for Everyone: the impact of the Human Rights Act on disadvantaged groups

Comic Relief awarded BIHR funding to conduct research in 2002 on how the Human Rights Act has impacted on four vulnerable sectors of society: asylum seekers, disabled people, older people and children. The results of this research fed into the Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry into whether there is a need for a Human Rights Commission. The final report and the executive summary are available to read.