Bright blue ideas on Britain and human rights

Make Britain the home of human rights, Conservative think tank urges PM.

Bright Blue, an independent think tank for ‘liberal conservatism’, has published a final report after its year-long inquiry into human rights and discrimination.

Bright Blue’s ‘Conservatism and human rights’ project was launched last year in response to worrying scepticism about human rights among Conservative voters, politicians and thinkers.

The project had three principal aims.

First, to evaluate what the Conservative government has done and is doing on human rights.

Second, to explore how Conservatives can think about human rights in a more positive way.

And third, and most importantly, to propose new narratives and policies to ensure human rights are strengthened both in the UK and abroad.

The project explored three specific areas: ensuring any changes to the UK’s human rights legislative framework strengthens human rights and is compatible with being a signatory of the ECHR; advancing human rights in British foreign policy; and tackling discrimination – including gender, sexual, religious, disability and racial discrimination – in the UK.

One major result of the project has been the development of this report – essentially, a manifesto of policy recommendations that seek to strengthen human rights and reduce discrimination, both domestically and internationally, drawing on conservative principles and thinking.

This report in turn aims to provide the centre-right, specifically the current Conservative government, with policies on human rights and discrimination that are achievable and principled.

And even though there probably are further policies on different human rights and discrimination issues that could be proposed, the authors said they consider the ideas detailed in this manifesto to be an important starting point.

This final report has about 70 policy recommendations for the current Conservative government’s social reform agenda and offers ideas on: measures to reduce all forms of discrimination in education and employment, especially gender and disability discrimination; measures to strengthen social integration for religious and ethnic minorities; measures to defend human rights protections in the UK, including for asylum applicants and those suffering from modern slavery; and measures to promote human rights overseas, including through the UK’s international development budget and policy towards refugees.

Here are the ideas regarding women’s rights:

A ban on the detention of pregnant women should be introduced;

All police services should follow the lead of Nottinghamshire Police and classify all instances of misogyny as hate crimes;

Sharia councils should be prohibited to conduct Islamic marriages if the couple has not previously obtained a civil marriage certificate;

The government should legislate to make it a criminal offence for medical practitioners to knowingly not report an incident of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) to the police;

The breach of a Domestic Violence Protection Order should become a criminal offence;

All advertised jobs in the civil service and government agencies, including senior civil service roles, should have gender-blind recruitment procedures;

Remove the requirement for employees to have worked for 26 continuous weeks with their current employer before having the right to request flexible working. Instead, when someone is offered a job, they should have the right to request flexible working;

All expectant mothers should be given the right to paid leave to attend antenatal appointments with a healthcare professional; and

The government should abolish employment tribunal fees for all basic-rate taxpayers.

Commenting on the project, Ryan Shorthouse, director of Bright Blue, said: “Britain is the home of human rights and a global force for good.

“After Brexit, Britain should not just be a global leader in free trade, but in human rights too.”

To read the full report, click here.