Justice Minister Dominic Raab said last week that the new charter would prevent free speech from being “eroded” by “wilderness and political correctness”. However, clauses in the bill specifically exempt laws made by ministers from the new free speech test – meaning it will not protect people from “various threats to free speech posed by the government”. Campaigners said the Bill of Rights would “end up hampering efforts to hold government to account”. A senior law professor told the Independent that the imprint was “very, very strange” because bills of rights around the world, such as in the United States, tend to apply to the government as well. “I think Americans, for example, would just be skeptical – you have a special extra right to free speech, but not against the government,” said Gavin Phillipson, a law professor at the University of Bristol. Professor Phillipson, who is also a visiting fellow at Oxford University and an authority on the comparative law of free speech, added: “They say you have these really strong protections for free speech – apart from the government. “In general, if you look at most threats to free speech, and what most bills of rights around the world are about, are the various threats to free speech that the government poses. This is very, very strange. “The fact that the government feels it necessary to exempt a whole range of things that it does – particularly the thing that people are most worried about, being prosecuted for what you say – is a very strange look at what a bill of rights means. “. Clause 4 of the new bill states that “in determining a question that has arisen in relation to the right to freedom of speech, the court must give great weight to the importance of protecting the right” – a measure generally intended to strengthen speech in court decisions. However, clause 4(3) says that this section “does not apply” to criminal proceedings or “to any matter whether a provision of primary or secondary legislation creating a criminal offense is inconsistent with a Convention right”. This means that government-created offenses cannot be considered inconsistent with the right to free speech under the bill, even if they limit someone’s right to freedom of expression. The Ministry of Justice denied the approach was a “characterisation” of ministers and said it was necessary to stop the “abuse” of free speech. Other parts of the bill also narrow the definition of free speech in a way that appears to exclude certain kinds of protest, defining it as the transmission of “ideas, opinions or information by speech, writing or image”. “They really limit the definition of expression that this applies to only that which includes words or images,” Professor Phillipson said. “There were cases involving hunt saboteurs – direct action protest – that the EDA [European Court on Human Rights] has kept the count as an expression. He said that “the restrictive definition of expression must be in place to ensure that the various forms of direct action protest that involve more than chanting slogans and waving banners do not even fall under this clause”. “Where people have committed the new public order offenses they would be exempt from that clause anyway, but I think that definition is to ensure that the new police powers in the public order bill can be used against them.” While claiming to protect free speech with the new Bill of Rights, the government has simultaneously pushed through new authoritarian protest-suppressing legislation in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. New police powers came into effect this week and were used to confiscate speakers and amplifiers from long-standing anti-Brexit protesters outside parliament – sparking an outcry. Exemption clauses in the bill mean the new free speech powers will not protect people from prosecution for offenses such as glorifying terrorism or publishing an image that gives rise to reasonable suspicion that they are supporters of a banned organisation. “These are the things that under the US first amendment, for example, would just be flatly unconstitutional, and that wouldn’t even be a hard case,” Professor Phillipson told the Independent. There are also specific loopholes in other clauses so that the government can ban someone from entering the UK based on what they have said, and protect the Home Secretary’s powers to strip people of citizenship. Charlie Whelton, head of policy and campaigns at human rights group Liberty, said: “Just as the Bill of Rights weakens all our other rights, it will also weaken our right to free speech. “The government falsely claims that it will improve the protection of freedom of expression, but this is not true. Clause 4, which directs courts to give ‘great weight’ to the importance of freedom of speech, limits itself from applying in criminal proceedings, determining whether legislation is compatible with human rights or confidentiality, immigration, citizenship, or national security issues The government does this so that free speech is valued only when it is not used against the government. “This clause will not protect protesters or whistleblowers, nor will it allow the courts to hold the government accountable for violating our free speech rights. Apart from the Policing Act, the Public Order Bill, the Internet Safety Bill and more, this is typical of a government that claims to protect free speech but only wants to avoid accountability where it can.” A spokesman for Index on Censorship also slammed the bill, saying: “We strongly disagree with the government’s claim that the bill will strengthen freedom of expression. “We believe the bill will only serve to expand state power and end up hindering efforts to hold government accountable, particularly on issues related to national security and citizenship, as specifically addressed in section 4 of the bill. “These are matters of enormous public interest. We must ensure that the necessary checks and balances are in place to protect our democracy and our fundamental civil liberties.”
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UK government faces new scandal as MP resigns
Spain NATO Summit
Spain NATO Summit Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
UK government faces new scandal as MP resigns
Spain NATO Summit
Spain NATO Summit Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
UK government faces new scandal as MP resigns
Spain NATO Summit
Spain NATO Summit Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved Ministers have generally characterized culture war issues such as uninviting speakers at universities as “free speech” questions, but these have little to do with the legal right to free speech as generally enforced around the world. “In fact, if you think about the main cases of cancellation culture, they’re not usually legal cases, they’re people who are Twitter-shamed or they don’t have a platform,” Professor Phillipson said. “In cases where people have been fired from their jobs or formally disciplined, they’ve mostly won their cases. This is really a cultural phenomenon, not a legal one. Universities call out speakers because students think they’re offensive and so on – they it’s not violations of their legal right to free speech because you don’t have a right to a certain platform.” He added: “The idea that this clause is intended to combat ‘wokery’ makes no sense to me and suggests it is more rhetoric aimed at pleasing their supporters and elements, perhaps, of the right-wing press. Because a lot of what the Government would think of as culture cancellation or ‘wokeness’ is actually not about the law at all, it’s cultural stuff.” A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “The Bill of Rights strengthens freedom of speech, but rightly makes a limited number of exceptions, such as maintaining a patient’s rights to confidentiality or where a criminal act takes place, for example a hate crime. These exemptions apply to everyone – they are not loopholes for the government.”
