Privacy

I want to look into some of the serious problems in the existing proposals to change regulations regarding home education in this country. This first time, I'll have a look at the principle of privacy.

Privacy is one of our most treasured fundamental human rights in Britain.

There is a saying in England which encapsulates our traditional thoughts about the privacy of home and family:
'An Englishman's home is his castle.'

It has been a legal precept in England, since at least the 17th century, that no one may enter a home, unless by invitation. This was established as common law by the lawyer and politician Sir Edward Coke, in The Institutes of the Laws of England, 1628:
"For a man's house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man's home is his safest refuge]."

How much more vital is that refuge for the children of the family within the walls of that home. Yet the Badman Proposals seek to violate this long-established common law principle and fundamental right to privacy.

Privacy, as a legal principle, is recognised around the world and is protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,

Article 17
1. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation.
2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

and in many other international and regional human rights treaties. Nearly every country in the world includes a right of privacy in its constitution. It is a principle accepted in all democratic countries.

In many of the countries where privacy is not explicitly referred to in the constitution, courts have found that right is established in other provisions. In many countries, international agreements that recognize privacy rights, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the European Convention on Human Rights have been adopted into law. The concept serves to preserve human dignity and upholds other basic values such as freedom of association and freedom of speech.

But it is under attack in the United Kingdom.

If Local Authorities are given powers by the government to enter a private home without due cause for suspicion that a crime has been or is about to be committed, simply because a child is being home-educated, we will have lost an important human right.

First this will affect home-educators, then everyone else who conducts their private family life slightly differently from the accepted norm. The concept of a right to a 'private family life', so traditionally dear to us in Britain, over centuries, will be utterly lost, probably forever.

Once a right is taken away from a people group, history shows us that it is rarely restored without war or revolution.