Protection racket

The fact that vulnerable people in state-funded private residential care are not protected by the Human Rights Act should be everybody’s major concern. This ‘fact’ emerged in the wake of a Law Lords’ judgment in June 2007, which ruled that human rights legislation did not protect the elderly or vulnerable in private care homes from eviction or neglect.

Some 300,000 residents of private care homes are funded by local authorities, and more than one in 10 homes are in the hands of the private or voluntary sector. But whereas residents of state-run homes are protected by human rights law, those in private care homes are not – even if their care is funded by their local authority.