The Scope of Human Rights

Voting should be viewed as a human right. Indeed, it is arguably the most basic of rights.

The anointed Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has suggested that Britain should have a written constitution that would codify the nation’s political procedures, and enshrine the nation’s commitment to the rights of the individual.

Everyone proclaims a commitment to human rights, but in Britain the vision of which rights a human being should enjoy remains opaque. For example, Americans are bemused at the British debate over the House of Lords, and not merely because of the bizarre British attachment to medieval titles: How, in the name of democracy, can the Mother of all Parliaments even consider having a legislative chamber that is not fully elected?

Voting should be viewed as a human right. Indeed, it is arguably the most basic of rights. Nine years ago, the British government signed up to the European Charter of Human Rights (ECHR), and Article Three requires that signatory states “undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.” The House of Lords is the second chamber of Britain’s legislature.

If a legal challenge were brought to an appointment system, it might very well succeed. Rather than depend upon judicial fiat, however, it would be more satisfactory if Britain reached its own decision, perhaps by looking around at the practice of others.

The Cross-Party Working Group on Lords Reform, chaired by Jack Straw, recently analyzed alternative models for the House of Lords, and issued a report. The composition of the ten-member group was striking – five sitting MPs, five members of the Lords (counting the Bishop of Chelmsford), and nobody else. This is akin to debating the reform or abolition of the monarchy, but limiting the committee to members of the Windsor family and the aristocracy.

No doubt a lot of thought went into the report, but there are some striking omissions. Nowhere is there the first mention of the idea that the people have a legal and moral right to elect their legislators. The bravest suggestion that the House should be partially elected, as there is an “expectation of many that in a modern Parliament the second chamber should have a degree of democratic legitimacy.” Only a “degree” of democratic legitimacy?

There are some assumptions in the report that are simply bizarre for any “modern Parliament.” For example, there is unquestioning acceptance that a certain number of legislative officials should be members of the clergy. In an era when officials mouth platitudes about the need to be inclusive to persecuted Muslims, the report states firmly that all 26 should be representatives of the Church of England.

The report worries that if Britain allowed elections this would not achieve the kind of House that the authors want – for example, it would be “impossible, in a fully elected House, to see how representation of the Church of England could continue.” Perhaps the writers should query the goal, rather than suggest that Britain cannot trust her citizens with too many rights.

Ultimately, Britain is out of touch with the strides that have been made by our neighbours and allies. Voting for legislators, whether state or federal, is certainly a right in the U.S., as recognised by the Supreme Court 45 years ago in Baker v. Carr. Twenty-three European countries have elected legislative chambers, albeit using a variety of systems. The overwhelming majority of European countries recognise the human right of their citizens to vote.

This leaves a rump minority of just four countries including, to date, Britain. In Slovenia, the argument was made that certain groups need appointed legislators in the upper chamber in order to protect their interests. This argument would have appealed to nineteenth-century landowners, but why Slovenian employers should have the same number of representatives as employees is difficult to imagine. Neither is it clear why Slovenian farmers should their own representative, but a thousand other individual groups should not. For reasons best known to themselves, the Irish constitute their second chamber, the Seanad Éireann, in a similar way.

One other European country still enjoys a relic of feudalism that is particularly difficult to justify: In the Belgian senate, ten appointed senators must be descendants of the royal family.

Thomas Jefferson said it best 187 years ago, as the United States adopted a system that was extraordinarily advanced for the age: "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves. And if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but inform their discretion."

There is a legitimate debate over how citizens should exercise their right to vote, from first-past-the-post to proportional representation. But there can surely be no sensible debate over whether citizens should vote. That is a human right.

This article also appeared in the New Statesman.