Weekly Update

With further easing of the lockdown announced this week in the UK, in all four of its constituent nations, and the Chancellor  announcing £30 billion of public spending in an attempt to kickstart the economy, thoughts have begun to turn at last to the transition from emergency response to recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

While the Prime Minister has focused on the "Build"  in the exhortation by the UN Secretary General to "Build Back Better"  after the pandemic, the Bingham Centre has been focusing on the "Better": what would a values-based recovery from the pandemic look like, and in particular one which put the Rule of Law and human rights at its heart?

In this week's Matrix podcast , Murray Hunt and Helen Mountfield QC were joined by Kate O'Regan , former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and Alan Miller, Co-Chair of the Scottish National Taskforce on Human Rights Leadership , to discuss whether the concurrent crises of Covid, Brexit and Black Lives Matter provide an opportunity for the UK to "Build Back Better", by reframing constitutional conversations which have been stuck in a rut for years. The discussion considers whether the newly revealed national consensus on matters such as the importance of the right to health, acknowledging historic injustice, and addressing systemic inequality create opportunities for constitutional transformation, and, if so, what should be the priorities of the Government's proposed Commission on Constitutional Reform.

Read more at our full Weekly Update here