Joint Committee On Human Rights Twenty-First Report


11 Conclusion

163. In a culture of respect for human rights, the economic. social and cultural rights embodied in the International Covenant should not be regarded as the poor cousins of the civil and political rights incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act. As we have emphasised repeatedly in this report, the two sets of rights are not distinct and should not be divided.

164. What our inquiry into the UK's reporting process under the ICESCR has most particularly revealed is that insufficient attention is currently given within government to the ways in which these rights can be used to provide a point of reference in the development of policy and legislation.

165. There are ways in which this situation can be ameliorated. We recommend that ministerial responsibility for the monitoring of compliance with the ICESCR be transferred to the Department of Constitutional Affairs. We recommend that it, together with the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights, should develop ways of measuring, with some degree of objectivity, progress in realising the Covenant rights.

166. We also recommend that, in the preparation of legislation, government departments should look beyond the range of the Convention rights to the wider international obligations which the UK has accepted in the human rights field. The examination of proposed legislation against these standards should be made explicit in the explanatory notes to Bills.

167. More widely, we recommend that attention to the Covenant rights should be reinvigorated throughout the public sector. The new Commission for Equality and Human Rights should regard this as a key task—the Covenant rights in particular can provide a framework which unites the concerns of both "equality" and of "human rights". The government, as well as the Commission, needs to promote the Covenant rights as a set of positive guarantees and aspirations—as a standard under which the endeavours of Parliament, the government, public authorities and civil society can unite.


 
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