UK equality quango likely to urge more rights for prisoners, terrorists, gypsies

London, Mar 5(ANI): A Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report is likely to claim that prisoners, gypsies, terrorists and union activists routinely have their human rights abused.

The EHRC has spent at least 150,000 pounds of taxpayers' money in publishing a review into how public bodies safeguard people's rights.

Led by former Labour politician Trevor Phillips, it has concluded that 'more could be done to improve human rights protections of some,' which also includes vulnerable people in care homes and victims of crime.

But it contentiously urges more human rights for groups that include criminals, travellers and gypsies on illegal camps, and suspected extremists.

Some of the EHRC's conclusions will likely spark off outrage anger because they contradict legal rulings made in Britain's courts and decisions made in Parliament.

The report states that prisoners should be given the right to vote in one of its recommendations.

"Offenders may be punished with a prison sentence, which means a denial of their right to liberty. Treating the right to vote as a privilege to be removed for bad behaviour is a disproportionate interference with a fundamental right," The Daily Mail quoted the report, as saying.

The report also states that travellers and gipsies had no choice but to occupy sites illegally because local authorities had undermined their rights by failing to provide land for caravans.

It echoed a claim by the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe that October's eviction of 80 families illegally camped at Dale Farm, near Basildon, Essex was an outrage against human rights.

"I don't really think the commission needed to spend tens of thousands of pounds telling us we need more human rights - that's the reason for its existence. It seems a complete waste of money. In many cases the people who the commission says are not getting human rights have forfeited them," Tory MP Philip Davies said. (ANI)

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