Marcus Booth: In defence of the European Convention on Human Rights

Marcus Booth is a lawyer at leading international law firm and a former co-chairman of Conservative City Circle law panel. He contested Angus at the 2001 general election.

In 1946 at the University of Zurich, Churchill spoke of the ‘tragedy of Europe’, of how from such a fountain of the Christian faith and ethics, had sprung a series of frightful, nationalistic quarrels which had wrecked the peace of Europe and the prospects of mankind. It was the indignity suffered by millions during two world wars that prompted European leaders to found the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

There is nothing controversial in the Convention. The right to life, liberty, security, fair trial, privacy, expression, property, free elections and other fundamental rights, are ones we can all presumably subscribe to. The hand of judicial activism may occasionally be felt, but on the whole the Convention can be credited for sweeping away some obvious malpractice and omissions in English law.

Two notable examples are the cases of Golder v. United Kingdom (1975), and Malone v. UK (1984). In Golder the Court ruled that it was a breach of Article 6 for a prison governor to intercept and prevent letters from an inmate reaching his solicitor. As a consequence the Prison Act (1952) was amended to require governors to pass on letters to legal counsel.

Prior to Malone v. UK (1984), whether to allow phone tapping was broadly left entirely to the discretion of the Home Secretary. However the ECHR ruled that this was an insufficient safeguard and that the law must be “sufficiently clear in its terms to give citizens an adequate indication as to the circumstances in which and the conditions on which public authorities are empowered to resort to this secret and potentially dangerous interference with the right to private life.”  Quite a relevant quote given today’s issues!

Marcus Booth: We must recognise and restore the rights of the people of the Chagos Islands

Marcus Booth is a corporate finance lawyer at leading UK law firm, Chairman of Conservative City Future and Vice Chairman of the UK Chagos Support Association (UKSA). He contested Angus at the 2001 general election.

It is a sad and sorry stain on the human rights record of the British. It is a chapter in British life that sadly undermines British claims to be a country that respects the rights of its Citizens. The story of the Chagos islands involves geo-politics, secret deals, deception, and the abuse of British citizens’ human rights.

The history
The Chagos archipelago is a chain of 65 small coral islands in the Indian Ocean, about halfway between Africa and Indonesia, seven degrees south of the Equator. The largest island, Diego Garcia, covers only 17 square miles – the others are much smaller. The climate is hot and humid, and tempered by sea breezes. The soil is very fertile and the seas around the islands are rich in fish. From 1776 the Chagos Islands were colonized and the Chagossian people developed their own language and culture.

In the midst of the Cold War, the United States decided it wanted a military base in the Indian Ocean to keep the USSR and China from threatening the Arabian Gulf. Suddenly the Chagos archipelago was more than just an insignificant speck on the map. The US’ first choice location for a new base was the uninhabited Aldabra Atoll, but Harold Wilson, the then British Prime Minister, feared antagonism from ecologists, as Aldabra is home to a rare breed of turtle. So he offered Diego Garcia instead, even though it was inhabited.

In 1966 Britain secretly leased Diego Garcia to the US for 50 years, with the option of an extension. This was done in exchange for a discount of millions of dollars on Polaris nuclear submarines – a way of concealing the payment. The US pays rent of one dollar per year. The deal was not disclosed to the US Congress, the British Parliament, or the United Nations. Until this time the Chagos islands had been part of the British colony of Mauritius, but in order to lease Diego Garcia to the US, Britain had to avoid giving the islands back to Mauritius when that country became independent in 1968. So, in 1965 the “British Indian Ocean Territory”, as the archipelago is now officially known, was invented for the sole purpose of setting up the base and it was decided that it had to be cleared of people.

For the islanders a peaceful existence came to an abrupt end as they were forcibly evicted and duped into leaving their homes for Mauritius and the Seychelles. This small and brave community, dumped by Britain, has been fighting for its right to return to live in the Chagos islands ever since. After an initial victory against the government in the High Court (subsequently overturned by the government who misused the royal prerogative to do so), they wait for the European Court of Human Rights to rule on their case. Robin Cook alone said that he would stand by the decision of the High Court. As soon as he was out of the way, the Government reverted to duplicitous form. 

Marcus Booth and Dylan Thomas: The politics of aspiration should mean an end to tuition fees

Dylan Thomas and Marcus Booth were Presidents (respectively) of the Conservative associations at Edinburgh and St Andrews universities from 1999 to 2000. Dylan served in the British Army Intelligence Corps for 6 years seeing active service in Afghanistan and Iraq, he now works in Risk Management. Marcus is a corporate finance lawyer at leading UK law firm and is Chairman of Conservative City Future, having contested Angus at the 2001 general election. They are both on the approved parliamentary candidates' list. They are argue here that tuition fees should be scrapped altogether in order to provide the highly educated workforce that Britain needs for its future prosperity.

Vince Cable's proposals for a Graduate Tax and Lord Browne's review of higher education funding have put the cost of higher education back on the agenda. How we pay for university is one of the great questions of our age. Is university an entitlement to be funded by the state, or should graduates be asked to contribute more?

The coalition seems to be moving towards the latter. Tuition fees were introduced in 1997, tripled in 2004, and are expected to rise to £5,000 over the next few years. The typical student now leaves university with debts in excess of £20,000.

The notion of a free university education apparently should belong to an idyllic past. With record numbers of students we are told that the tax-payer can no longer afford the full cost. The historic deficit bequeathed by the last government only serves to strengthen the case. Graduates will, it is assumed, have to pay more by extending New Labour's tax on learning.

However the figures reveal how close we are to the provision of free university education. The UK spends a little over 1% of GDP on higher education, over 70% of which is government spending in the form of research grants, tuition fee subsidies, and student bursaries. Income from tuition fees, currently set at £3,300 per student, comes to only 0.15% of GDP or approximately £5 billion. This is small change for the government but an increasingly heavy burden for graduates.