Responding to David Cameron's speech on the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said:
“David Cameron was right to express pride in the esteem in which the Magna Carta is held around the world as an early step towards basic human rights. And he was right to express concern about the ‘distortion and devaluation’ of those rights. And yet his government has been doing just that.
“Judges have said that the benefit cap puts Britain in breach of its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet he plans to tighten it.
“I am now at a protest calling for the closure of Yarl's Wood detention centre – where, as at similar facilities around the country, people who have committed no crime are held in indefinite detention – people who are often survivors of torture. Yet the UN refugee convention says no one should be locked up for seeking asylum.
“This government has announced an attack on the Human Rights Act and has removed the crucial universality of human rights. The Prime Minister’s praise of the Magna Carta doesn't hide the dangerous reality of his government’s attacks on human rights.”