The JCHR’s inquiry coincides with the publication last summer of the ‘Governance of Britain’ Green Paper. This announced the Government’s plans for a national debate on British values and, ultimately, a British Bill of Rights and Duties. CRAE submitted written evidence to the JCHR in autumn 2007, arguing that now is the time to build on the Human Rights Act for children and incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and its Optional Protocols into UK law, ‘levelling up’ human rights protection in the case of overlap between the UNCRC and the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition, we have suggested that the general principles of the UNCRC, as well as other distinct rights for children, could be expressed within the Bill of Rights in a dedicated children’s section. Katy Swaine, CRAE's Legal Director, says:

'We welcome the Government's commitment to build on existing human rights legislation. Now is the time to embrace and celebrate children's human rights. Indeed, if not children, then who are the Government’s intended beneficiaries of enhanced British rights?'

In 2002 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that the UK should incorporate the UNCRC into domestic law, and this has attracted support from both the JCHR and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Primary Care and Public Health.

Debates about a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights are well advanced and CRAE has taken advice from children's rights activists there. We have also examined the position of other common law countries and European countries such as Norway that have amended their human rights legislation to include the UNCRC.