A new wave of human rights legislation to guarantee clean air quality and nutrition could be rolled out by the next Labour government, under plans announced by the shadow justice secretary on Friday.
Steve Reed will vow to fight “tooth and nail” against any attempt by the government to repeal the Human Rights Act, and instead look to roll out the “next frontier” of “fundamental freedoms”.
In a speech at Middle Temple in central London, Reed will criticise ministers’ controversial attempt to overhaul human rights legislation, describing the promised British bill of rights as a “distortion of Orwellian proportions” and a “rights reduction act”.
Vowing to ensure British people have the right to clean air, “adequate” health care, sufficient nutrition and more control over their data, Reed said Labour will continue the work started by Gordon Brown’s commission on the UK’s future.
It comes days after the mother of Ella Kissi-Debrah, the first person in the world to have air pollution listed as a cause of death, marked a decade since her passing. Rishi Sunak sent “thoughts and hearts” to the nine-year-old’s family, but his environment secretary refused to back clean air targets.
Sunak has been urged to back a clean air human rights bill, informally deemed “Ella’s Law” that is passing through the Commons.
Ella died aged nine, after an acute asthma attack in south London on 15 February 2013. She had had more than 25 emergency hospital admissions in the previous three years. Ella’s law would make clean air a human right for all.
Reed will say: “We will explore which social and economic human rights require legal protection in the modern world. We will debate the next frontier of our human rights and fundamental freedoms.
“Whether it is rights to clean air, or a sustainable climate. The right to adequate health care and sufficient nutrition. The right to transparency, accountability and ownership over the use of your personal data. The challenges of the modern world do not require us to go backwards on the basic legal protections enshrined in human rights.”
In the same speech, Reed will announce tough measures to clamp down on antisocial behaviour that can leave “communities feeling broken and powerless”.
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To prevent crime, he will pledge that a Labour government would deliver “the world’s first trauma-informed criminal justice system”, deploying the science of trauma across early life, courts, prisons and probation to tackle damaging cognitive and emotional development that often finds criminal expression later in life.
The Ministry of Justice has previously said the bill of rights “builds on the UK’s proud tradition of liberty by strengthening freedom of speech, re-injecting a healthy dose of common sense to the system and ending abuse of our laws”.