Letter: Everyone's rights

I HAVE become increasingly concerned over the nature of the debate concerning the Human Rights Act and the application of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The questions of prisoner voting and registration of sex offenders are being used to drive an attempt to repeal the act and withdraw Britain from the ECHR.

Yet the rights enshrined in both laws are the rights of all of us and attempts to weaken them will make it worse for the most vulnerable. Many vulnerable people are in complicated situations where their rights are ignored because of cost saving.

Leaving a two-year-old child with profound learning disabilities without adequate support during the night because of ownership rules or placing a 50-year-old man for 13 years in a residential care home for people, 40 years his senior, are likely to be significant breaches of Articles 2 and 8 of the convention. Cruel and inhuman treatment may not just happen in prison!

We are seeking ways of ensuring that the rights of such people are properly protected and respected through the courts and politicians do themselves no favours when they pretend that human rights law is somehow a bad people's charter.

The most vulnerable in our society are in danger of having their rights trampled on. Perhaps we would all be better off if more politicians spoke up for them.

Ian Hood

Learning Disability Alliance Scotland

Eskbank

Dalkeith, Midlothian