 My name is Matthew Sycharis and I'm a Director of the Cambridge Pro Bono Project or CPP. And on behalf of the CPP, I'd like to welcome you all to this talk tonight and to virtual Cambridge. By way of brief background, the CPP is now in its 11th year. It's a research program run out of the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. What we do is to partner faculty members and graduate research students with leading barristers, chambers, charities and NGOs to produce targeted research on issues of contemporary social significance. Alongside that work, we also provide a network here at Cambridge for students and faculty members with an interest in pro bono work and human rights. And to that end, we're starting a regular speaker series this year. And as our inaugural speaker, I'd like to very warmly welcome Adam Wagner, who will speak on COVID-19 and human rights. By way of brief introduction, Adam is an experienced human rights and public lawyer and barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. He's acted at all levels, including in the Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights. And Adam is currently a specialist advisor to the Joint Committee on Human Rights in their COVID-19 inquiry. Adam is well known for his human rights advocacy work. He founded both the award-winning Human Rights Charity Each Other and the acclaimed UK Human Rights Blog. And it's also a prominent legal commentator. He's also set up and hosts the Better Human podcast. In addition to all of this, Adam regularly lectures on human rights law and is currently a visiting professor of law at Goldsmith University. And in 2019, he was appointed to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a panel of counsel. So we're very grateful to have Adam at Cambridge tonight and he'll speak for about 30 to 40 minutes, followed by about 15 to 20 minutes of Q&A. Now, as a matter of Zoom etiquette, please post questions in the chat box at the very end of the talk, but don't post in the chat during the talk. So a very warm welcome to Adam, who I'll hand it over to. Hello. Hi, everybody out there. And thank you, Matthew and Katya Fuhtu, for inviting me. I find these talks that we, in this kind of strange COVID times, a little one way. And all I can see of you at the moment is a kind of series of coloured circles with your initials in, which isn't a great way to get to know people. But I know you are humans and I will try and open up for discussion relatively early because these are this topic of COVID and human rights is utterly central to everybody's lives in a way which no other topic. I don't think in the human rights world has ever been in my life. And it's almost overwhelming. It's such a difficult topic to discuss because, you know, COVID impacts on so many different parts of society. But what I wanted to do, first of all, I'm first going to break Matthew's rule and ask you to post something in the chat. Let me just share my screen. I was reading today that apparently the Labour Party had a National Executive Committee meeting today where about 15 people walked out. But because it was on Zoom, they had to figure out what's the etiquette for walking out of a Zoom meeting. And apparently the person who made the speech on their behalf made this kind of very sort of solemn speech about why they were all walking out and then couldn't find the leave button. He was just sort of sat there awkwardly clicking on his mouse trying to find out how to leave the meeting. We've all been there. It's really difficult, but I'm going to try and say if anyone is going to walk out of this meeting in disgust, please put some sort of message in the chat. You know, maybe in capital letters explain what's going on and why you're disgusted, but another option is just to wait until the end and ask me a question. Right, so here we go. You should now be able to see Matthew or Kat, can you just put your thumb in the air? Yeah, you can or finger or good. So I call this talk the stress test, because the COVID-19 pandemic has been a true stress test on the human rights architecture, not just of this country but of every liberal democracy across the world and every country, regardless of whether they're a liberal democracy or not, there's a huge impact on basic rights. It's almost such a big impact that it's difficult to understand and categorize. But I just wanted to ask, and if you put in the chat, I'm going to put a picture up and I want you to instantly respond and tell me who this is. And the answer can't be the actor that plays. I want to know who the character is. Who is that? Do we have an answer? Here we're in the chat. Die Hard Guy, 24 Dude. Yeah, no, Jack Bauer, that's it. He is the 24 Dude, Jack Bauer. So if you're a current undergraduate student, you probably will not remember this because this is when you were a baby. But after the September of the 11th attacks in 2001, after the World Trade Center in the Pentagon were attacked by aeroplanes and thousands of people were killed, and the global war on terror, quote on quote, began. The most popular TV program for quite a number of years was this program called 24. And Jack Bauer was the main character and he was a hard talking, rule breaking anti-terrorist guy who worked for the US government, sort of, I think for the CIA or something like that. And his whole raison d'etre was he didn't play by the rules. And whoever said Die Hard Guy, you know, you're absolutely right, he was a bit like the Die Hard Guy who was a cop but didn't play by the rules. And one of the things that Jack Bauer liked to do was beat up potential terrorists. And he was the guy that really, that we, the public, sent in to solve the problem of what do you do when there's a ticking bomb. And it's about to go off and it's about to kill tens of thousands of people. And you've got the guy in the room who you think has done it. And you can't, and the law says you can't torture them, you can't, you know, beat them up. But what are you going to do? What's the answer? And I think that one of the lessons from the popularity of that show is that underlying a lot of people's psychies, when they're under threat, is this wish that someone will come in and break the rules and dispense with the niceties cut through the red tape, whatever you call it. But basically, you know, beat up the terrorists, torture the terrorists, something like that. And the reason I raise this is because I want to make a basic point which is that times of times of crisis, and particularly times of threat to people's health and well being or lives are times are danger times for human rights protections, because they are the times when populations and governments say look, we know we've got these nice rules, but this is a super emergency. And if we don't do something now, we're going to, you know, people are going to die. And the thing we're going to think the thing we have to do is this, and we're going to do it and either they tell people they're doing it or they don't. And there's a kind of implicit agreement from many, many members of the public who say well you know okay fine, we'll dispense with the rules. And I think we see that all across the world in relation to covert we see all sorts of norms. So, things that aren't laws, but our perhaps normal aspects of our constitutional setup or our political system, which we're used to survive because they are part of our basic sort of social system. They kind of disappear, and they are danger times for people's rights because what we know from history is that there is a lot of bad things happen a lot of things go wrong when there's a big crisis like this. Easier one. Well the first one's easy the other three who can tell me who any of those people are gone sticking in the chat. And it's not Jack barrel die hard guy, or the 24 dude. I'll do the first one it's Churchill so you've got you've got the first one that's the easy one. Can you can anyone tell me who anyone else is. Wow, up to Eleanor Roosevelt you got it spot on the other two are pretty difficult I'll tell you who the other two are unless anybody perks in. The other two are Rene Cassin is number three, and David Maxwell five is number four Rene Cassin was a French jurist who was central to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and David Maxwell five was a British prosecutor he was a barrister who prosecuted at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, and then he went on to chair the drafting committee of the European Convention on Human Rights. And Bill was an absolute central proponent of the modern human rights system he said that has to come a time when human rights are enthroned in the world he wanted rights to be at the center of societies and not rulers. And he was a huge supporter of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Council of Europe and Eleanor Roosevelt chair the drafting committee for the Universal Declaration. People who live through, by far the greatest crisis that the modern world has experienced the Second World War, and you might argue that it was the Second World War, and the First World War combined with some with the sandwich filling in the middle being the Spanish flu which killed more people than the First World War up to 100 million people this extraordinary time of crisis. And that solution, or at least part of their solution was to create a set of international internationally recognized and agreed upon rules or values, and they call them human rights or at least they call this that they ascribe this modern system to the idea of human rights rights that every human has, because they are human and that cannot be breached they cannot be. They are inalienable they cannot be overcome for any reason doesn't matter if you're the you know you've got the guy, it was the ticking, the ticking bomb in the room it doesn't matter if you've got a highly infectious and deadly disease which is ripping out humanity, these rules are the basic rules that must always be kept to, and at the center of these rules is, and this is that this is the first words of the Universal Declaration, recognition of the inherent dignity, and the equal and amenable rights of all members of the human family, and being the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world, the inherent dignity, equal human family, these words were these these are the sort of that's the principle of human rights and if anything, dignity is the probably the defining principle if you opened up the root of the tree and you cut through to the middle you would find dignity, because it is it describes pretty well what you want what your mission statement for society is is where everybody lives with dignity and dignity doesn't necessarily mean having lots of money, it doesn't necessarily mean having a particular job it doesn't mean living in a particular way, but it means you can you have self respect and people respect you for the person that you are and that's that's dignity. So how human rights protected, and I suggest there are three pillars to the way human rights protected institutions law and culture, and it's a pretty anemic understanding of human rights to think that it's just the law bit and I know some of you will be law students and I'm a lawyer, but I do think law is any one part of embedding human rights into a society. So you got institutions on my left pillar, you got international institutions like the United Nations, the World Health Organization is a human rights organization if you read the charter of the World Health Organization. It's opening chart in 1948. It is about protecting the it's about recognizing that health is a an essential part of human rights, because it gives you that dignity, because you can't if you don't have health. It's very difficult to have dignity and obviously it doesn't mean everybody who is unwell loses their dignity, but you provide a basic level of health, health care to have to make it more likely that people retain that dignity. Local institutions that's in every state has its own has to have its own human rights compliant or human rights and protecting institutions and government, of course, governments play a huge role in protecting human rights. And then you have laws, so you have all these international declarations and treaties so if you're a law student and you're studying this, you'll find things like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is which is a declaration. You have the European Convention which is a treaty you have the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Rights of the People with Disabilities on the Rights of Women, the sort of substrata of the Universal Declaration. And they are where we find are the basic agreed principles of human rights and they're not set in stone they are, they are intended to be what what the European Court of Human Rights called living instruments so they grow like a like a tree they grow alongside society. And it will be, it will be crazy not to for them not to grow because then you have, you would have attitudes which would, you know, which were around in 1948 or 1951 being applied to situations in 2020 which doesn't make any sense. There are institutions and laws so in the UK we have something called the Human Rights Act which brings in the European Convention into local domestic UK law in various different ways. And you have courts and other bodies which enforce those laws and there's no point having human rights laws unless they are enforceable unless they are in it. They have to be achieved. You've got to be able to you can't protect rights with with with words. They, you know, you have to be able to go and enforce your rights claim your rights culture embedded values. This is a bit more difficult but I think culture plays a really important role in protecting human rights you can go into any country in the world and say here is a human rights compliant Constitution and here are some institutions with which have human rights embedded in them. Unless there is a cultural acceptance of these values of values of equality, which, you know, not every society when no society accepts equality, as of, you know, in total, and we still have to fight for equality but some societies that really don't accept equality, you know, societies where women are not allowed to drive or you know the really basic gay people are not allowed to marry those kinds of you have to have cultural buy-in. So embedded values I think you can have slowly you embed values in society. And what that means is once you've, once you've done that once you've embedded those those values into international and national culture, and, and even into language, it becomes a lot easier. It becomes a lot harder to breach people's human rights, even if the end either of the other two pillars are are corroded away a bit. And it's perfectly possible that you might have laws restricted the impact of laws might be restricted you might have a change to institutions, which make them less human rights, protecting or promoting. If you have a culture of human rights, then you at least have some sort of mitigation you have some sort of protection against that. So that's just an idea of where human rights are. And I'm just going to, before I get on to COVID I'm just going to talk about which, which are the rights so we have here the 16 key rights in the European Convention, which are, which apply in relations COVID will pretty much all of them. Certainly the right to life article to absolutely central, easy to forget in a weird way. And I'll talk about that later. It's not to be unlawfully detained as a specific part of the right not to be unlawfully detained the right to liberty, which relates to the spread of infectious diseases. And the ability to detain someone to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and it's no surprise that because if you think back to 1951 when this treaty was was agreed. There was also a killer far, which was far more deadly, and whether it was far, whether it was, you know, more infectious or more deadly and principle it was certainly more deadly in effect across the world killed 100 million up to 100 million in that Colorado was still a huge issue to be all of these infectious diseases were part and part of part and parcel of international culture so it's no surprise that was provided for the right to a fair trial has been hugely affected by the COVID crisis because courts haven't been able to function I mean they've got back to functioning in the most part but very difficult to hold jury trials, which are socially distanced, very difficult to have fair hearings when they're being held online as as I probably 75% of my court word now is online. Family and private life well, I'm sure you will have felt this very keenly by the debate about whether you're going to be allowed to return if you if you're in Cambridge you know are you going to be able to go back for Christmas. And to be able to be with our families over Christmas as many people are used to, but, but forgetting that what about the impact it's had since March where many of us have not been able to see our families or our friends in anywhere near the level that we would want to be used to. I'll come back to that when I talk about the lockdown. Freedom of thought conscience and religion, huge impact on people's religious lives, which have been, you know, people who are used to going to to the mosque or synagogue or the church every day or every week have been unable to do that and it's just been so precedent in history for that happening. It's set for in cases of religious persecution which which this has not been freedom of association would not been able to protest anywhere near as much as we usually are able to the current lockdown, arguably bands protests, entirely, which is deeply problematic. We do the right to marry actually but the rights marry it's been hugely affected. I don't know if any of you have been waiting for that moment to have have your wedding with more than 15 people or even any people, but it's, it's really unbelievable that, you know, a year ago that we wouldn't be able to marry in the way we want to. The peaceful enjoyment of property this relates to people having their businesses taken away from them will arguably millions of people have had their businesses all their livelihoods taken away because of lockdowns because of covert education. My children were who are both primary school age were at home for nearly six months before they went back to school. You know, and they missed months and months of education and they, you know, online education is not is not an equivalent to in person education. This has affected a generation of children generation of children who couldn't take their exams probably some of you are probably in that category that you couldn't take your exams last year and had to rely on your predicted and so there's just been, you know, across the piece there has been this huge effect, but I want you to think of it in this way when you think about through a human rights lens how you deal with a crisis like this. This is this is the picture. And what I mean by that is that you have to be looking across all of the rights. That's what if I if you take one thing away from tonight. It's that human rights making decisions through from a through a human rights lens or respecting human rights is about balancing between different rights. And that is because you're not making decisions just for one person who is who has a very particular sort of makeup of what they need and what dignity is to them. You're making decisions in this context for tens of millions of people. But the decisions themselves have to balance all of these different rights that people have, both as people as members of groups as people with a particular identity people as of a particular race, people of a particular religious persuasion, people of particular political views. It's not easy. But just to take an example. I'm going to talk about the lockdown. Looming large over this entire crisis is the right to life. And there's no escaping that where you've got a infectious disease a highly contagious infectious disease, which has killed tens of thousands of people and has the potential to kill tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands more. The right to life weighs heavily in the balance. But it has to be weighed against the right to people's rights private and family life, the right to education, the right to free association. Where the right balances is not obvious and there is no answer you will not find an answer in a human rights court judgment, you will not find the answer in an article from the founder of the human rights movement. Winston Churchill didn't have anything to say about how you deal with covert 19. It is, there is no obvious answer. And in a way, the government and the institutes of the state have been making up as they go along and I mean that in not necessarily disparaging my way, but just remember, it's a balance. So the stress test. I've already said crises are a danger time for human rights. They reveal the extent which human rights are protected across institutions law and culture. So a bit like when you, if you got any medical students who are people have had a test like this when you, you inject radioactive dye into somebody's body to take some kind of diagnosis, diagnostic tests so that when you put them through an MRI, you can see the, the, you can see certain things that you wouldn't ordinarily be able to see. And the covert 19 this kind of crisis is like injecting a radioactive dye through our entire society, because it shows how our institution, how fit our institutions, how fit is our culture, how fit is our law does our law protect us. If you don't really know that in times of severe crisis, because you suddenly see, I turns out you know, turns out the government can can't shut down parliament. I mean that's a different crisis that was the Brexit crisis, but that was a good example of people did not know extraordinarily before the Supreme Court decided it couldn't that the government couldn't shut down parliament for as long as it wanted to pro-road parliament. And in the same way, you know, could, can the government, could the government decide on, can the government impose criminal laws which affect everybody in the country and lock them in their houses effectively without parliamentary approval. And yes, it turns out they can. And there's not much we can do to stop it and these are all these are stress tests. And covert 19 is cause perhaps even forced societies to balance and prioritize right so talked about that balance but we've also along with balance comes one sorry that I'm just hearing some sort of crisis going on in my house downstairs. Excuse me pausing sounds like everybody's alive so I'll carry on. It's not just about balancing it's it's also about prioritizing. These are the hard decisions if any of you go and work for the for in a public authority or for the government. It's not just about balance it's about priorities and it's not always obvious what you're meant to prioritize and it can change. Institutions have been central to decision making the state is back I mean the most extraordinary. Things we found out about what the state is capable of it turns out the state can pay half the country's wages for for for six months, because it's because it's decided they've got to shut businesses. It turns out the state can impose these criminal laws that keeps our houses. We've learned a lot about the state or maybe we always knew that about the state but we'd forgotten. Certainly Winston Churchill and Alan Roosevelt and David Maxwell five and renaissance knew about the power of the state because they'd lived through wars. They'd lived through totalitarian dictatorships and it's seen them firsthand and renaissance case, because he lived in Nazi occupied France, and I think escaped the. We now know the power of the state again, and we've got it we should remember that. So, issues, I'm not going to deal with all 10 of these issues going to open up some this for conversation but just to give you a taste of the kind of issues so I've been working. So at the beginning with the Joint Committee on Human Rights on their COVID-19 they've got an ongoing COVID-19 inquiry which has been going on since I think since March, and I've been assisting with the evidence gathering and I think they've released five reports another one coming up probably next month or in the new year. And it's just bewildering you know the amount of issues which engage essential human rights, but which and which are in which the answer is not obvious but are utterly crucial for people's lives. I'll come back to lockdowns obviously I'll come come back to lockdowns briefly. State responsibility for deaths you know, at some point the state is going to have to account for its actions in, and the number of deaths you know they've been over 50,000 deaths related to COVID-19. Did the government act in the right way did the NHS act in the right way, we're going to have to find out they will have to be a public inquiry they will have to be a reckoning. It's going to be tough, but we need to know because if this happens again which it will, because one thing about human history is that pandemics come back again and again and again. We need to know what we did wrong this time so we can do it right next time. Contact tracing, we've set up a kind of state surveillance system, effectively, we've set up a huge architecture of people whose job it is to find out who a person with a positive test for COVID-19 now had sex with last week or went out for dinner with or rushed past in a bakery. This is an extraordinary interference with people's rights not necessarily a breach but an interference. Education I've discussed care homes. You know, tens of thousands of people over the age of 80 have died many of them have been in care homes. Have we done the right thing, how do we account for the fact that in the first wave so many care homes were had outbreaks local outbreaks. What do we do about people being able to see their relatives and touch their relatives and hug their relatives these basic things that couldn't be more central to to human rights protections. Are we going to have mandatory testing and vaccinations. Are we going to have freedom passes is it going to be a requirement to end to go to watch football or to go on an airplane that you have a certificate saying you've been vaccinated for COVID-19. What about people who can't be vaccinated what about people who don't want to be. In terms of literature, we've become very local in our thinking with COVID-19 but the real every country. Every country is experiencing COVID-19 differently and some simply do not have the resources and financial or health infrastructure to deal with this virus. What are we doing about them what so where is the international solidarity would become very insular. Jobs for jobs and contracts for the mates of politicians who say we were doing this in a super urgent way we had to you know we had to just go down our roll indexes on our phone address books. Was it right you know and corruption is a human rights issue. It really is because corruption impacts on equality. You can't have an equal society and with equal opportunities for people where the governing classes give contracts and jobs to their mates because their mates will be like them on the whole. Social services what about all the social services which have just not been happening during the crisis and these are just 10 issues I'm happy to pick them up in the chat. I'm just going to talk about the lockdown for a minute. This was a tweets sent out I think in June from Bedfordshire police, if you think that by going for a picnic in a rural location now we'll find you. Don't be surprised if an officer appears from the shadows, we're covering the whole country. And this is one of my favorite tweets of the entire pandemic I think it was meant slightly tongue in cheek but the idea that police are policing picnics. You know that we couldn't we couldn't have imagined this a year ago and yet there we are the story of the lockdown is is pretty extraordinary. I want to tell that story but I just want to give you two basic propositions and these are propositions which I'm not, I'm not willing to argue tonight and if you believe differently. Please argue elsewhere but my basic propositions are coven 19 is a highly infectious and deadly disease. The spread of the disease can be slowed or even halted by social distancing. If you don't believe me, believe the World Health Organization, the World Health Organization doesn't like lockdowns. It really doesn't. Because the World Health Organization is a holistic human rights organization it's not just about it sees health in its wider context. And they said, large scale physical distancing measures and movement restrictions often referred to as lockdowns can slow coven 19 transmission by limiting contact between people, and you might think. That's obvious because it's an infectious disease that spreads through people breathing on each other and touching each other. However, these measures can have a profound negative impact on individuals communities and societies by bringing social and economic life to a near stop. Such measures disproportionately affect disadvantage groups including people in poverty migrants internally displaced people and refugees, who most often live in overcrowded and under resource settings and depending on and depend on daily labor for subsistence. The World Health Organization recognizes that at certain points some countries have had no choice but to issue stay at home orders and other measures to buy time. But governments must make use of the extra time and by doing as all they can to build the capacity to detect isolate test and care for all cases and etc, etc. So, they see lockdown as a necessary evil sometimes, but it's, but it has these profound effects. And the story of lockdown in this country in the United Kingdom is, you know, one of the most extraordinary complexity you know we've had. We've had something like 10 different versions of the lockdown and I've been slightly obsessively following all of the criminal laws which have developed over over the lockdown just going to. I'm just going to share a different screen with you to show me my sad table that I've made. Oh, I've shared the wrong one. Let's try it again. Excuse me. There's a sad table. Can you see my sad table. So my sad table is a table of all of the emergency laws that have been made in relation to lockdown since the beginning of the crisis so it starts we start hearing on the 10th of February so about nine months ago. And here we go. There's pages and pages and pages of stuff. All of this has been about all the lockdown has been over 60 so I just done so there has been exactly 60 in fact there's 61 because there was an amendment to the last one laws and each one of these laws came out of the some room in the government. And without any consultation, without they appeared like magic, sometimes in the middle of the night, the minutes before they come into force. They use an emergency procedure which is under something called the public health act 1984, which allows the government in emergency situations. And it's the government not parliament but the government. So just, you know, Matt Hancock can just sign this law into law and it comes, and it suddenly is in is in force. And these aren't just any old laws this isn't a law about you know dangerous dogs or what colors paint your doors. These are laws which are preventing people from leave at the moment leaving their house or being outside of their house without a reasonable excuse so making all everything illegal. All social interaction illegal unless proven otherwise. It's the most extraordinary shift and apparently Matt Hancock called it Napoleonic. So these laws have, because that was the way Napoleon legislated. These laws have used this emergency procedure without having to go through parliament until 28 days later, by which time the next laws come in so so nobody's bothered about it. So we, as far as I know a single, a single one of these which actually isn't listed because it's part of another, it's about social care laws, a single regulation has been struck down by the courts today in fact relating to the provision of social care to children, but none of these laws have been struck down by court they've been challenged a number of times and the courts have basically said let the government get on with it. It's a crisis, and you know reading between the lines we need a bit of Jack Bauer in in in this situation we need the government to be locking people down to be preventing people leaving the houses to be preventing people protesting preventing people getting married, preventing people see their relatives. Right, I am open to the possibility that this, this kind of legally enforced lockdown is the right thing but that's not to say every aspect of it is right I don't think it's right that, you know, a student who has party gets £10,000 in each and every person who was involved in the holding of the party gets fine £10,000 but somebody who who meets with a group of friends in a park gets find £100 it doesn't make it doesn't make sense it's not all logical. The lockdown story is, is really that has been the story of this, of this crisis. I'm just going to finish off in an open up to questions. Can I find. I'm being a bit naughty because this is a, this is a meme, which isn't a very good meme because it calls Lord Sumter the former Lord Chief of Justice, Chief of Justice, and there isn't a Lord Chief of Justice but even if there was it's not him. He's a former Supreme Court Justice and he, and he also says but he says the British public has not even begun to understand the seriousness of what's happening in our country. Many, perhaps most of them don't care or won't care until it's too late, they instinctively feel that the end justifies the means. The motto, not the motto, I don't think Lord Sumter has a problem with motos but he does have a problem with mottos. The motto of every totalitarian regime that has ever existed. So the end justify the means is the motto of every and he's right that is the motto of every totalitarian regime that ever existed. And this is that the totalitarian regimes that we do not want to replicate we don't replicate any totalitarian regimes and have as their motto, you know, let's, let's kill all the Jews, or let's, let's promote the master race, or let's, you know, take what actually gives the poor maybe that's something you'd agree with. But this is a different motto, and the ends here, the ends here are preventing tens of thousands of people from dying. And that complicates things in terms of the, in terms of the this analogy, but also I don't buy the, the argument that this is a some sort of slide into totalitarianism. I do very much believe that the, there are certain aspects of what we've seen, which have been extremely concerning in terms of breaking those norms that I referred to at the beginning, and with the three pillars. I think certain norms have been broken and we may find it quite hard to go back, particularly the, the norm of bringing in passing laws with parliamentary approval just seems to have disappeared. And has now reached the position where it puts the new criminal laws to parliament the day before, where they see them an hour before that, and they're not allowed to amend them they can kind of vote yes or no. And I just think that is not proper scrutiny and I think we've got ourselves into a real mess over that government has got used to running the country by committee, rather than in an open and transparent way, I think that that's a big problem. The, the way that laws have been communicated the way the rules have been communicated the way that they've been enforced has been problematic in lots of ways but I don't think we are in any kind of totalitarian system and I also don't think we are in, we at this position, this situation can be compared to the evils of the Nazis or you know it always goes back to the Nazis but it's not the Nazis because the, we are going through a pandemic of a very with a very deadly and infectious disease. And unfortunately, there is a direct connection between our between our what we would describe as our normal social activities particularly gathering with other people and the spread of the disease. And when we go back to that grid with the with the human rights, different human rights in it we have to balance the right to life with the other rights, and what the right balance will be is, you know, it couldn't be more important, and we all need to fight for every right we have to ensure that the, that we are heard and that the balance is struck is the right one. But I think it's wrong to say that you can just achieve that by, by going on as normal, which is slightly more political point than a human rights point but I think that a proper human rights analysis, which I think every human rights organization is setting and, you know, if you read the joint committee on human rights report from July. Which law assumption quotes in his latest daily mail article he doesn't call it the Human Rights Committee says a parliamentary committee, because he has an issue with with the way the human rights community is dealt with with with this crisis. But the Human Rights Committee did not say that lockdowns are inherently wrong. And what they said was, we are skeptical of the way that this lockdown is being imposed. And we are concerned that certain rights are being overlooked, such as the rights protest and those sorts of things. So I'm going to, I'm actually not going to go any further with with the presentation because I want to give you a chance to ask some questions. And on that note, I'd like to thank you very much Adam for the talk. And for those who want to ask questions, type them into the chat box and make sure that you address them to all panelists and attendees so we can, we can read what you're writing. I think there's one question already from Alex. And so we might start with that Alex says, Hi Adam thanks so much for joining us. Do you think a case ledging a breach of article two so the right to life on the part of care home residents is likely. I'm thinking particularly about an Osmond and UK test. Do you have any views on that. Thanks. Yeah, just for the people aren't familiar with Osmond Osmond is a case about the real and immediate risk to life so what the state has a duty when there's a real and immediate risk to life which it knows about reason that we should know about to take all reasonable steps to prevent it. There is, I mean quite clearly that you can't think of a more a more obvious threat to life than this kind of pandemic for a care home where it's by far most deadly with people who are over the age of 80 who will comprise of most people in care homes. I think there's certainly a case to answer for what happened in the early parts of this crisis. I think it can only be answered by realistically by public inquiry, because only a public inquiry will have the, you know, the, the wideness of scope to, and the resources and the legal powers to get to the bottom of what happened. It's such a big story, because it doesn't just involve government decisions involving your prior care homes are private on in large part, their private businesses, they each that they will have their own different policies they will have behave differently each and every instance. That is a real open question I think it's a question we've avoided. We as a society really avoided answering why we're in the teeth of the crisis but we're going to have years and years after hopefully the crisis ends of litigating these points and then going through the courts. I have no doubts. It's I think it's an open question the most definitely arguable. I can see a question. Matthew from Anna, Magini or Magini sorry if I've mispronounced it. She says she says she follows me on Twitter thank you everybody who follows me on Twitter, but but is asked whether the fact that I'm having to explain the lockdown rules to people has suggested that maybe the government has not been explaining them as well as it could and she suggests a breach of article seven of the European Convention article seven is the, it's technically the right against retrospective punishment but it has built into it through particularly through case law that law needs to be accessible needs to be clear enough for people to understand it. And article seven is a really weak right in my experience and I have tried it a number of times and I've never got it passed, you know, the judges just aren't interested in it but though, but it's, it's there and and it's also built in that principles built into other rights particularly the right to freedom of expression the right to freedom of association the quality of law point it's also built into the common law the principle of legality. And I think there's been. It's in normal times, these covert regulations would be, you know, being absolutely a bit slaughtered in the courts, I think I really think they would be so much so much that is vague and unclear and contradictory and doesn't fit with bits of the regulations they're drafted in the in these sort of little committees in secret nobody gets to see them before they come out they're full they're generally full of errors, which get corrected later. So, ordinary if that was an ordinary statute, which has been through Parliament the courts would have no sympathy at all. The courts have a more sympathy with these but also they've not really been in the criminal courts that much because the criminal courts are so delayed, most offenses are being dealt with by these fixed penalty notices, which people, half people have been prosecuted, I don't know how much has been prosecuted, certainly they just haven't been the higher court law on this stuff yet. Not that I've seen anyway I'm sure that the criminal lawyers are dealing with it as a base level the magistrates courts that sort of thing. The way that these laws have been communicated has been really problematic, I think just releasing laws in the middle of the night is bad. The day before they come into force is bad. You know, they, it's, it's really quite fundamental. And I think also partly it's been deliberate I think there's been a deliberate method by the government for whatever reason to muddy the waters a bit so make it seem like things are stricter than they actually are laws are strict and they are making the guidance stricter than the laws, and it creates a kind of atmosphere of people being unsure. But I also think it's created an atmosphere of people losing faith and trust in what the government are doing. So I'm not I think it's backfired but I whether it will be article seven. Possibly, I think I just don't have that much faith in the courts in the moment to take a big call like that and basically invalidate a regulation which has led to tens of thousands of fines and prosecutions but I don't, I don't know. I think we've we've got a question from Darren up next that engages the kind of interesting point really of if certain human rights breaches do have to happen how do we understand them. And Darren says, we've seen several states make formal derogations under human rights instruments due to COVID-19, most notably in Europe Latvia Romania and others. Do you think derogations are a more appropriate way for dealing with the emergency to demonstrate that these measures are temporary, rather than rely on qualifications built into particular rights themselves, such as article five one. I think this is a really difficult one I know that the, I read the derogations towards the beginning of the, the crisis I think the derogations all from places like they were mostly Eastern European, they mostly happened around the same week. And, and I think they relied on a, on a probably a wrong interpretation of a couple of cases about quarantine, and about whether you could put people in quarantine under article five of the convention. I'm, I'm nerve, I get nervous about derogations I don't like the idea of, of taking a human rights holiday. I don't I know there's a kind of academic approach. I say academic I mean I know there is a theory that you derogate because you know it's good. It creates a timeline on its timeline it's, it shows that it's limited. And I kind of understand that I just feel like this crisis is one which was was was predicted by the European Convention. It's right there in article five. It's right there in the, in the fact that each of the, you know, the right to free speech the right to privacy the right to family life that they're all qualified so they all have public health as a potential reason legitimate to interfere with them, as long as it's in a proportionate way. And I think that I want the state to be carrying out that exercise every single time. It comes out with one of these laws, because otherwise, you know I really don't want them to be able to derogate from from the those rights from the, you know the rights privacy or the right to freedom of speech. And I think that I didn't mention proportionality in my talk I should have done this idea of this concept of proportionality is the balance, it is about only interfering with the basic rights if that interference is necessary and proportionate. I'm sorry it's necessary and lawful and is no more than is necessary to achieve what you want to achieve and I think that discipline is really important. For me in this context of a pandemic is more important than any of the justifications for derogating. Great. I think we have another question. And this one is from Jordan who may have just missed the start of the talk but I think it's a very interesting point and one we could probably expand on. And she asks, do you think the suspension of hearing and trials during the first lockdown could potentially breach the right to a fair trial. Of course it's very difficult question to answer but what what do you see as some of the issues being engaged there Adam. I mean look the right to a fair trial has built into it that it has to be speedy and speedy you have to get get get you have to get it on within a reasonable timeframe otherwise you know it becomes unfair 10 years later. We already were having a criminal justice crisis, which has been well described by people at the secret barrister. The actual the threshold for delays that are permitted under article six is quite high, you know trials can take years to come on it's not a breach of article six. So I think the reality is that during the first lockdown you were talking about only maximum a few more weeks of delay. And, and there was a clear justification for that delay, because of the, because of the nature of the pandemic and it was really a severe. So it was really severe at the beginning, at the very least and I think I just can't see a court. I think that's going to be a breach of article six now. There's a separate question or related question about whether the, the new kinds of criminal trials such as jury trials with, you know, by video, you know done in the theater. You know all the article six compliant I think that's going to be that will be. We'll find out what the courts and we'll find out, but I think it will depend in we very fact sensitive. And you know, and there's a good argument that getting a jury trial happening, even slightly imperfectly by video is better than it not happening at all, or putting the jury members at risk of catching a virus that could kill them so it's really tricky. Okay, thanks Adam, I think we've probably only got time for one or two more questions. But at the risk of showing favoritism, one of our panelists and directors cut here has a question to ask and it relates to her own home country cut here would would you like to ask. Yes. Well thank you very much for your talk Adam, and you have sort of on one of your slides you've circled a number of human rights that you think are most, you know, the most affected by COVID measures or the COVID pandemic itself. Curiously, or at least I thought curiously you haven't circled article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights so the freedom of expression and freedom to receive information which I find quite central actually in this pandemic. And in Germany, mainly, but also in Switzerland where I'm from, we're having quite an extensive discussion on how sort of allowing COVID deniers to protest and you know, mingling COVID deniers mingling with sort of right wing extremists. And actually affects this right to freedom of expression because many people nowadays including myself actually I've given a talk on, you know, pretty much the same topic as you have tonight in Zurich about a month ago. And I was very hesitant to actually criticize the government, you know, from a human rights perspective just because I did not want to be associated with these protesters. How do you think that sort of culture of self censorship that we are, you know, kind of, I don't know, starting to cultivate in this climate where you don't want to be associated with COVID deniers actually impacts the sort of the content and the extent of the right to freedom of expression. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right should have been circled and I think I just sort of ice, I put it all into article 11 that the right to freedom of association and protest but you're absolutely right. It covers, it's covered by both. I mean, I personally have no problem with, with saying that COVID deniers should be able to, you know, talk about should be able to protest, if they want to protest. I think that's protest. I think it's reasonable to ask every any protest to comply with social distancing regulations to do a risk assessment that's basically where the law has been for just before this lockdown and in the UK, and I hope it will be going back to that from next Wednesday that people can organize protests as long as they do a risk assessment and follow health and safety guidance which you know isn't that onerous for for a protest outside. Obviously, it poses a particular problem for COVID deniers, because they deny that those measures make any difference they deny that mass make a difference maybe they deny the disease. I'm actually quite comfortable with that that problem, because I think that's a fair balance actually. I think that there is, you know, there is a second question about spreading misinformation. And this isn't connect this isn't just exclusive to cover this is across lots of issues. You know, missing this information is very, very broad concept, you know something and what would know what would lock say about it, he'd say, he'd say, until we, we don't know what the misinformation is until, until, you know, later on that's free speeches that you've got to allow a these ideas to clash in order to find out which ones are true. However, on the other hand, we do, you know, no, no liberal democracy is kind of absolutist on free speech. There is, you know, we have rules laws against racial incitement we have laws against homophobic speech, and maybe, maybe we can have we should have laws against spreading particular kinds of obviously false narratives which will, which will have a detrimental effect on public health so for example, and I give this as an example not as a sort of I'm not making a scientific statement, but you could you could make a case for once the vaccinations are available, people who who say the this vaccination is actually, you know, fake or it's, it's actually just a way of, of not Steve Jobs. I've lost his name momentarily Bill Gates Bill Gates. Yeah, the other one Bill Gates Steve Jobs isn't like I'm sort of you know taking over people's bodies and control on their brains. That is, you know, damaging stuff as it happens that the first thing I ever did as a pupil barrister as I went to watch the prosecution of Andrew Wakefield who's the the doctor who said that the the MMR jab caused autism and he published an article about it and he used all sorts of unethical you know, techniques to get there. And it wasn't true, and he published an article in the Lancet and and he was struck off as a doctor in the United Kingdom, and I think that there is, you can, there is a real public health danger to saying that vaccines that do work because it impacts everybody in the same way that there is a real public health danger to somebody, you know, just going out in, you know, into a public place and organizing a gathering in, you know, these things that wouldn't necessarily normally have any impact at all really on anybody else, suddenly create this this peril so I think it's really tough. I would prefer people to talk whatever crap they want and get shot down through people, you know, showing them why they're wrong, because I think on the whole, that's the best way of doing things we should we should keep criminal laws about speech to the very, very minimum that we possibly can so I prefer that to be dealt with through through argument. But I don't I don't have a problem with protests having to fulfill certain health and safety requirements and I also don't have a problem for standing up for people I don't agree with you know, giving the same things that I don't agree with because you know, that's the point of free speech. I think we've just got, I think we've just got time maybe for one more question but I note that there are a few, few questions posted here, kind of challenging the bona fide days of the government's decision to lock down we probably don't have enough time to address each of them. I guess they do speak to the kind of political disquiet that some of this is caused and so I think I might ask the final question trying to kind of draw together some of these themes. And, and that is kind of picking up on on two of the pillars that you mentioned in one of your early slides Adam that that that human rights can be regulated through culture, and also through institutions. And the question is really this you know in countries like Germany that suffered dreadfully during the Second World War we saw a kind of new constitutional settlement after that conflict premised on concepts like dignity and the right to personality. I think it's fair to say to say that no such watershed has occurred yet in the United Kingdom. So the question really is, you know, is the culture of human rights there in the United Kingdom in our courts in our legal processes. And if not, if not to that same degree, you know, where do we go after COVID and and this is a question that picks up on your work with the Joint Committee. Are we going to see a change in culture ought we to change our institutions or does the current framework operate properly. Well, if you want to pick this this question up I gave a talk just before COVID called the UK is dark and dangerous and written constitution which is on my podcast the better human podcast it's about episode six. And it was actually in Cambridge I gave it in Cambridge to the politics society I think at Pembroke. So you can, it's the better human podcast. I think there should be a written constitution. I think Brexit show demonstrated that I think COVID has demonstrated that the, you know, but I've got to stick with what I said, you know, through my three pillars is that you can have a really good institution if no one buys into it and the, and the culture doesn't support it, and the institutions don't reflect it then it's just a nice bit of writing so you've got to think holistically across the whole society. And I think, actually, funnily enough, I think some interesting things have happened over people's. People support human rights over this crisis because if you look at the people around who are kind of, you know, who spread the people who share memes with the Lord, Lord of Justice, Donald consumption. They are not your typical lefty human rights people who I think have kind of dominated the human rights community in the United Kingdom, since the Human Rights Act. They are, you know, libertarians they are right wingers they are politically right wing. And that mean I got that mean from Toby young who's you know who really ain't no lefty. And I think it's really interesting that they, there's been a kind of awakening to the importance of, of solid rights protections, you know, protected by law, amongst a different part of the community then the the part that generally stands up to human rights and what I really hope is a that those people will remember the lesson they've learned after this crisis ends, and be the human rights movement will be bigger as a result and won't just be sort of two factions you speak to each other because I think those different perspectives, and there's different lenses through which to all that there's different roots into thinking about understanding why human rights is so important are different to each other and they bring in different kinds of people. And I think I'm in my little slight silver lining my my my glimmer of hope from all this is that there might be more. There might be more support for, or there might be less support for weakening human rights protections in the UK as a result of all this. I think you'll have to do. I think I think it did. I think it was an admirable answer to a very open question. And I think on that note it's it's all the more reason why we should hold more talks like this to engage as many people as possible. So I think that that probably brings our session to an end. If you were in Cambridge Adam and we were in the Sir David Williams building there would be a round of applause. We will have to imagine that applause then but I can thank you on behalf of the faculty and of the CPP for coming in and speaking this talk will be recorded or it has been recorded and will be published on our website page on the faculty and we'll send you a link Adam and if you wish to promote it please do. So I think we can all thank Adam and I very briefly like to spruke our talk for next week where we're having soul layerfroined MBE come in to talk to us about the death penalty. So very different topic but similar issues and once again thank you very much Adam and have a good evening. Thank you.