Government response to HL 5-I/HC64-I, session 2009-10 (ISBN 9780108459139)

Any of our Business? : Human rights and the UK private sector, first report of session 2009-10, Vol. 2: Oral and written Evidence

The Foreign Affairs Committee believes the events of the 'Arab Spring' should stand as a reminder to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) that failing to take a stronger and more consistent stance against human rights violations by overseas regimes can carry risks for the UK. Any suggestion that the FCO downplays criticism of human rights abuses in countries with which the UK has close political and commercial links is damaging to the UK's reputation and undermines the department's overall work in promoting human rights overseas. The Committee is less confident than the FCO that there is little conflict between its simultaneous pursuit of both UK commercial interests and improved human rights standards overseas. The Committee heard concerns on this front with respect to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in particular. There should be a more robust and significantly more consistent position on human rights violations in the Middle East and North Africa. On China, the Committee finds it difficult to support the Government's approach to human rights engagement with China in the continuing absence of any evidence that it is yielding results, and when the human rights situation in China appears to be deteriorating. The Government should engage in more explicit, hard-hitting and consistent public criticisms of human rights abuses in China. The Committee welcomes the FCO's continued production of an annual human rights report and the Government's recognition that the UK's own human rights practices affect its international reputation and ability to pursue improvements in human rights standards overseas.

This book analyses the role of businesses in regulating and influencing the exercise of free speech on the internet.

The present book brings together perspectives from different disciplinary fields to examine the significant legal, moral and political issues which arise in relation to the use of lethal force in both domestic and international law. These issues have particular salience in the counter terrorism context following 9/11 (which brought with it the spectre of shooting down hijacked airplanes) and the use of force in Operation Kratos that led to the tragic shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Concerns about the use of excessive force, however, are not confined to the terrorist situation. The essays in this collection examine how the state sanctions the use of lethal force in varied ways: through the doctrines of public and private self-defence and the development of legislation and case law that excuses or justifies the use of lethal force in the course of executing an arrest, preventing crime or disorder or protecting private property. An important theme is how the domestic and international legal orders intersect and continually influence one another. While legal approaches to the use of lethal force share common features, the context within which force is deployed varies greatly. Key issues explored in this volume are the extent to which domestic and international law authorise pre-emptive use of force, and how necessity and reasonableness are legally constructed in this context.

On cover and title page: House, committees of the whole House, general committees and select committees

The Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill was re-introduced in the House of Commons on 19 November 2009 and the Committee welcomes a number of aspects of the Bill which is implementing some of the commitments made by the Prime Minister in his Governance of Britain statement in July 2007. But the Committee considers there are a number of significant omissions from the Bill including in relation to judicial appointments, parliamentary scrutiny of security and intelligence matters, and the restrictive judicial interpretation of the meaning of public function in the Human Rights Act. They recommend amendments relating to the latter two points. They also look at Protest around Parliament, Ratification of Treaties and Right to a fair hearing and access to a court in the determination of civil rights.The Video Recordings Bill was introduced into the House of Commons on 15 December 2009 and is a fast track piece of legislation which repeals and revives the provisions of the Video Recordings Act 1984 in order to enable them to be notified to the European Commission under the Technical Standards Directive and so secure its enforceability. The Committee considers the human rights issues raised by this Bill should be subjected to parliamentary scrutiny. However as the 1984 Act, serves as an important child protection purpose, that are currently unenforceable, the Committee accepts the need for fast tracking this legislation and does not propose to further scrutinise this Bill.

This book develops an analysis of the historical, political and legal contexts behind current demands by NGOs and the United Nations Human Rights Council to hold corporations accountable for their human rights violations. Based on an analysis of the range of mechanisms of accountability that currently exist, it argues that that those demands are a response to the failure of neo-liberal policies that have dominated the practice of politics and law since the emergence of this debate in its current form in the 1970s. Offering a new approach to understanding how struggles for hegemony are refracted through a range of legal challenges to corporate human rights violations, the book offers a fresh perspective for understanding how those struggles are played out in the global sphere. In order to analyse the prospects for using human rights law to challenge the right of corporations to author human rights violations, the book explores the development of a range of political initiatives in the UN, the uses of tort law in domestic courts, and the uses of human rights law at the European Court of Human Rights and at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. This book will be essential reading for all those interested in how international institutions and NGOs are both shaping and being shaped by global struggles against corporate power.

It is inevitable that the UK will have strategic, commercial or security-related interests overseas which have the potential to conflict with its human rights work, says the Foreign Affairs Committee in a report published today. The Government should not be trying to assert that the two can co-exist freely: it should instead be explaining publicly its judgments on how to balance them in particular cases. The Committee's recommendation comes in the light of the FCO's decision not to designate Bahrain as a "country of concern" in its 2011 report on its human rights work, despite the repression of demonstrations in Bahrain in 2011. The Committee recommends that the criteria for designation should be based purely on assessments of human rights standards and should not be coloured by strategic or other considerations. The Committee also challenges the Government for being inconsistent in not taking a public stance on the Bahrain Grand Prix but boycotting group stage games at Euro 2012 in Ukraine. On rendition, the Committee finds that the protracted police investigations had an unacceptable impact on the work of the Gibson Inquiry and of relevant committees. The Government should explain why current investigations into claims of rendition made by two Libyans are expected to take so long. The Committee accepts that enough progress has been made in Burma to justify some relaxation of the EU's sanctions regime, but it says that Burma's human rights record remains seriously blemished. It recommends that the UK should call for better access to those still detained as political prisoners, and should press the Burmese authorities to allow independent observers to visit Rakhine state, to assess the extent to which the rights of the Rohingya minority are being respected.

This collection of fifteen essays by leading experts in regulation is unique in its focus on the constitutional implications of recent regulatory developments in the UK, the EU, and the US. The chapters reflect current developments and crises which are significant in many areas of public policy, not only regulation. These include the development of governance in place of government in many policy areas, the emergence of networks of public and private actors, the credit crunch, techniques for countering climate change, the implications for fundamental rights of regulatory arrangements and the development of complex accountability mechanisms designed to promote policy objectives. Constitutional issues discussed in The Regulatory State include regulatory governance, models of economic and social regulation, non-parliamentary rule-making, the UK's devolution arrangements and regulation, the credit crisis, the rationing of common resources, regulation and fundamental rights, the European Competition Network, private law making and European integration, innovative regulator sanctions recently introduced in the UK, the auditing of regulatory reform, and parliamentary oversight and judicial review of regulators. The introductory chapter focuses on testing times for regulation, and the concluding chapter draws ten lessons from the substantive chapters, noting the importance of regulatory diversity, the complexity of networks and relations between regulatory actors and the executive, the new challenges to regulatory habits posed by climate change and the credit crisis, the wider economic and legal context in which regulation takes place and the accountability networks - including judicial review, parliamentary oversight and audit - within which regulation operates.