Bill of Rights
Sir Keith Joseph's call for a national 'bill of rights' is indeed timely. Britain has never had a Bill of Rights enforced other than by the sanction of Parliament, and the novelty of Sir Keith's proposal is that there would be an extra-parliamentary guarantee for its enforcement.
Parliamentarians and those who love Parliament will approach this proposal with caution if not suspicion. But the events of the last decade have unfortunately shown it to be necessary. The last Labour, the last Conservative and the present Labour Governments have shown a distinct anxiety both to yield to powerful interest groups within the state at the expense of the individual citizen, and, in the pursuit of their own business, to evade such parliamentary provision for the protection of the individual as exists. At the same time very few backbenchers have been willing to unite against the Whips to prevent the abuse of governmental authority, while such mechanistic devices as the ombudsman, designed to serve the individual by humbling the state, have utterly failed to work. Let us have the protection both of a Bill of Rights and of a constitutional court.
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