Professor Monica McWilliams:

I thank the committee for this opportunity to be with you all. I appeared at the committee previously when I was the Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. During this process we spent ten hard years - and I genuinely mean ten of the hardest years of my life - drafting the advice on a bill of rights, day and night, weekend after weekend, year after year. Under my previous chief commissioner, Brice Dickson, and then myself, we undertook a huge number of consultations and went out across the country to civic society, to every sector, to every meeting, to every place that we possibly could have gone across Northern Ireland. The people of Northern Ireland are extremely politicised in their understanding of this peace agreement. They know that on page 17 of this agreement there is a proposal - they know it word for word - that the commission draft the advice on a bill of rights and give it to the British Government, which will then legislate. There was also a proposal for a charter of rights. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission have jointly fulfilled their mandates. When I was chief commissioner we also prepared the charter of rights, which we passed to the Irish Government and to the Northern Ireland Assembly, and there it has sat. We are not here to talk about the charter today - we are here to talk about the bill of rights - but both of them were part of the agreement. That agreement went out to the people in 1998 and I remember going into the streets, villages and towns of Northern Ireland on an open-deck bus to convince people to say "Yes" to this agreement, telling them that one of strongest foundations of the agreement was a bill of rights. We told them that if we had respect for human rights, what had happened would never happen again and there would not be a recurrence of the conflict. We drafted the advice on the basis of what had gone before, but also on what we would like to see in the future. As the committee is aware, there are many conflicts taking place in the world. People talk about transitional justice and the importance of human rights, and the advice was very much based on that. The advice was then sent to the Secretary of State, and it is good to see that it is included in the 2003 Joint Declaration. I draw the committee's attention to paragraph 2, annex 3 of the Joint Declaration:

The British Government is committed to bringing forward legislation at Westminster where required to give effect to rights supplementary to the ECHR to reflect the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland.

This 2003 declaration shows a commitment to the introduction of legislation. Since 2008 nothing has happened and it has been more of a regression. This has also been acknowledged by the Irish Government. Under the current Prime Minister, Mr. David Cameron, the British Government has declared under its election manifesto that it would scrap the Human Rights Act. Since then there has been a great deal of discussion about the implications for Northern Ireland and for Ireland if the British Government withdrew from the European Convention on Human Rights or from the jurisprudence of the European court. Even if the UK did withdraw, it would still have to adhere to the fundamental European Charter on Human Rights, which is overseen by the Council of Europe. There are quite a lot of constitutional issues at stake here. We drafted the advice when I was with the human rights commission and since returning to academia and to the university.

When Dr. Smith and I undertook the interviews with political parties and with the two Governments, the Irish Government participated and the Northern Ireland Office did not and responded only through correspondence but said it would respond to the final report. We were concerned that at the end of the process there would continue to be a vacuum.

In the Haass-O’Sullivan talks it was picked up and put in a paragraph that it may be taken forward under a committee dealing with culture and identity. There it has stayed. We have no idea in any current talks if the bill of rights is still on the agenda, if it has died a death, been buried, parked or if there is a push from either Government to have it resurrected and put back on the agenda.

We proposed that this vacuum needs to be filled. I recall, in particular when we were dealing with the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, the Patten Commission, taking the parties out of the situation to give them the opportunity to spend some dedicated time dealing with the issue by itself. They could be introduced to others who had faced a similar situation of drafting bills of rights in conflicted situations or even spend some dedicated time, peacefully and quietly, away from cameras where they could take the advice the commission offered in which some parties think the commission went too far and others might think it did not go far enough, but it was for the political parties to decide. Commissioners are very proud of that advice on the grounds that civic society in Northern Ireland was 100% behind it and did not fall out over it. It was over to the parties and the Governments. We are next. That is the stage we are at.

We propose two things, one of which is that there be some technical expertise to assist this process because we were shocked when we undertook those interviews at the lack of knowledge on what a bill of rights does and indeed what the Judiciary, the Executive and Parliament do. It seems that people misunderstood the role of each of those functions but also misunderstood the justiciability of some rights and not of others. The technical expertise is needed, as it probably was in respect of other issues in the Good Friday agreement but it is not a technical problem. It is a political one. We do not know whether the parties and Governments will now dedicate themselves to setting aside that time to deliver on this proposal.

An Irishman has taken over the directorship of the Fundamental Rights Agency in Europe, based in Vienna, who has that expertise. Is Europe the best place to do this, setting time aside in Vienna or somewhere else? Should it be in the United States as previously? Or should it be here in Ireland, North or South, or in Scotland, England or Wales? We also know that Scotland and Wales are taking a very different stand on the response of the current Prime Minister’s reaction to the European Convention and so it is of enormous constitutional value to have those discussions also at the inter-parliamentary level. There are several places where this can be taken up but it seems to have died a death. That is of great concern to us and that is what we say in the report.