UK General Election: Liberal Democrat Manifesto and Human Rights

The Liberal Democrats have published their General Election Manifesto 2010. Cian has noted the main human rights commitments in the Conservative Party’s Manifesto here, and I have previously highlighted the main human rights commitments given in the Labour Party’s 2010 Manifesto. This is a brief overview of the main human rights commitments given in this Manifesto, however is important since it may be that the Lib Dems may be the King-makers in the new British Parliament  (see here, here and here).

The Liberal Democrats have made the following commitments:

UK General Election: Conservative Party Manifesto and Human Rights

Yesterday Liam highlighted the key human rights issues raised by the Labour Party Manifesto. Today we take a quick look at that offered by the Conservative Party. First, at a superficial level, it is worth noting that the phrase “human rights” appears in two sections of the manifesto. It appears once in a section on domestic political reform, under the title ‘Change Politics | Restore Our Civil Liberties’, but only as part of the title of the Human Rights Act (which the Conservative Party pledge to replace with a British Bill of Rights – more on that in a moment). It appears four times in the foreign policy section, titled ‘Promote Our National Interest | A Liberal Conservative Foreign Policy’. So does this mean four times as much human rights in foreign than in domestic policy? Not quite.

Manifesto Watch: UK Election & Human Rights

We are expecting the launch of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats’ manifestos for the General Election on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week respectively. Human Rights in Ireland will offer some early analysis of each one on the days of their launch to assess just what this election may mean for human rights in Britain and in Ireland.

UPDATE (08.49am): Adam Wagner over at the recently launched UK Human Rights Blog has written this morning that this bill of rights (for the UK, not Northern Ireland) is to be a key election issue. He also draws attention to a piece in the Guardian today critiquing the Conservative Party’s plans for human rights. Unless there’s a major policy announcement between now and then, I will hold my tongue on this until the manifesto announcement at the start of next week.

Why the UK General Election Matters for Human Rights in Ireland

As Cian noted earlier today, the UK election has begin in earnest. This election, of course, has potentially very significant ramifications for the future of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Bill of Rights process in Northern Ireland. In particular, the Conservative Party-currently enjoying what seems like a healthy lead in the polls-has proposed the repeal of the Human Rights Act 1998 upon election and its possible replacement with a ‘British’ Bill of Rights. In this post I want to just briefly expand on the concerns about this proposal noted by Cian in that earlier post.

Human Rights & the UK General Election

And they’re off! The least surprising news story of the day so far has been that Gordon Brown has made the trip to Buckingham Palace to request that the Queen dissolve Parliament, effective next Tuesday (this is to allow the Digital Economy Bill to be rushed through Parliament in the next six days). A General Election will take place on Thursday 6 May.

There are two key human rights issues that may be affected by the outcome of this election – one of which will be of great concern to human rights advocates in Ireland. These are:

• the future status of the Human Rights Act; and
• the campaign for a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland (see here, here, here, and here).