Question time: UN committee wants answers

A human rights group has called on the government to reply to a UN committee which is set to question Britain's record on asylum-seekers and legal rights.

Liberty said the government should answer a report by the United Nations Human Rights Committee which has published a dossier with 29 questions on issues including racism in the judiciary and the right of silence.

The committee is set to hold a meeting in Geneva later this autumn and the group has called on the British government to give a full response.

Most seriously the report asks what measures the UK authorities have taken "to address and prevent incidents of racial and racist violence which occurred in Oldham and Leeds". Members also want ministers to justify the policy of dispersal of asylum seekers and answers their concerns over racial bias in the criminal justice system.

Director of Liberty, John Wadham, claimed the government was failing to act.

"The government may say it has started looking at these issues. But racism and discrimination are still serious problems - throughout the criminal justice system, and in both the state treatment and public attitude to asylum seekers. The government must take a lead in changing the climate which has allowed people to manipulate the asylum seeker issue to promote distrust and racial hatred," he said.

Wadham said the claim by ministers that progress had been made on civil rights through new legislation was a weak argument.

"It shows the government cannot be complacent about its record on human rights - and cannot continue to use the Human Rights Act as a fig-leaf defence against all charges," he said.