It's Human Rights Day tomorrow. How will the UK be marking it? Most likely, it will pass unnoticed or be derided as another manifestation of political correctness. Yet, surely, having laws that protect the basic rights of everyone in Britain, including people at their most vulnerable, is something to be proud of? So why aren't we celebrating?
Sadly, it is because we have allowed the myth to take hold that the Human Rights Act is nothing more than a rogue's charter used by lawyers to protect the undeserving.
We read misleading and inaccurate stories involving cats and immigration or burglars and fried chicken. What we read less about are those vulnerable older people in the UK who depend on the act for protection, or to improve the fundamental services on which they rely.
Dignity and respect are at the core of human rights. Unfortunately, older people are sometimes treated in a way far removed from this. What is most shocking is that this can happen when they are at their most susceptible, needing care in hospital or in their own homes.
You need only glance at the appalling findings uncovered by the Equality and Human Rights Commission's recent inquiry into homecare for older people. It revealed major and widespread breaches of human rights ranging from physical and financial abuse and lack of help eating and drinking to scant regard for the privacy and dignity of those being care for.
Or examine the failings that took place at Stafford hospital. Solicitors acting for 119 families argued that some patients, the majority of whom were older people, received such awful care it amounted to inhumane and degrading treatment, breaching human rights law. This included people left sitting in their own faeces and left without pain medication. Although the hospital did not accept there had been human rights breaches, it paid out just under £1.4m to individuals and their families.
Then there's the case of the couple who were to be separated after more than 65 years together: the husband needed residential care but his wife was told by the local authority that she did not qualify. They successfully argued that the council had breached their human rights, and the authority reversed its decision.
But the Human Rights Act is much more than a legal cosh with which to bash public bodies when they fail. It gives them a positive duty to protect human rights, providing a great basis for improving the services they provide – and as such should be celebrated, not feared.
We may think it is not necessary to have laws to make us treat people with respect and dignity. Perhaps it shouldn't be. But, sadly, while some older people continue to be treated so badly, they continue to need the protection the act provides.
Next time someone claims that we don't need the Human Rights Act, perhaps they should be reminded that it protects everyone – including their mum, their granddad or even themselves.
• Michelle Mitchell is charity director of Age UK
