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Transcript

Consulting for Dystopia

The Northern Ireland 'Health Bill'

The European Convention on Human Rights is an international treaty between state members of the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe is NOT the EU - it’s an international human rights organisation. 

The United Kingdom was one of the first nations to sign the Convention - over 70 years ago.  The Convention was codified into UK law in 1998 with the Human Rights Act.  

The Human Rights Act 1998 sets out the fundamental rights and freedoms that everyone in the UK is entitled to. It incorporates the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights into British law. 

Article 3 of The Act protects citizens of the United Kingdom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 

According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission: 

Public authorities must not inflict this sort of treatment on you. They must also protect you if someone else is treating you in this way. If they know this right is being breached, they must intervene to stop it. The state must also investigate credible allegations of such treatment (including by third parties).

However, now it appears that the Northern Ireland Executive is planning to override the rights defined by Article 3 of the Human Rights Act by proposing that in circumstances of a public health threat - that the state will itself define - that British citizens may be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 

The consultation document argues that a new Health Bill is required because of the emergence of public health threats necessitating the removal of human rights. The consultation document overtly refers to SARS as one such threat. 

In March 2020, of course, the UK government advised the UK public to lock down - not attend work or school or places of worship - because of what they claimed was a new novel SARS virus: SARS Cov 2 (or Covid 19).  People who tested positive for this so-called viral infection were deemed to be diseased and required to quarantine - even though few showed any serious symptoms of disease. It soon became clear that those “infected” were at very little risk of any serious illness. The infection fatality rate - especially among the young - was negligible. Many questioned whether the true virus was in fact government-run testing programmes and fear campaigns undertaken by state-controlled media. 

In this context proposed public health legislation designed to deal with public health “threats” like SARS seem thoroughly ill-advised. The Northern Ireland Bill proposes draconian new powers that would allow authorities to enter the premises of “contaminated persons”, that such persons submit to medical examinations, be removed to other establishments, be “decontaminated” and be denied the right to work. All of these things could be ordered on the basis of someone testing “positive” for something from a PCR test - or simply holding views that might deem them to be a public health threat. 

It’s clear that if this type of legislation is enacted in Northern Ireland other parts of the UK will follow - Northern Ireland will be a test case. But, being a test case for the removal of the most fundamental human rights - the right not to be subject to torture or degrading treatment - is a horrific move towards de facto totalitarianism. This proposed law is a bad law. 

And, also, people working towards introducing this law - civil servants, government lawyers and elected representatives - are acting unlawfully. They are proposing the destruction of human rights laws designed to protect our freedoms after the horrors of the 2nd World War. 

Please, regardless of where you are in the UK, write to your elected representatives and make it known that Article 3 of the Human Rights Act must be inviolable - in every corner of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  

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