The introduction to yesterday’s report into the state of human rights in the United Kingdom had a familiar ring. The sentiments expressed by the report’s author Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, could just as easily have come from any number of speeches by the prime minister and other senior government figures in the heady days of 1997, when “bringing rights home” was the order of the day and the Human Rights Act was to be the catalyst for building a “culture of rights” across the land.

In such inspirational times it was easy to airbrush history and ignore the murkier aspects of our human rights past, especially relating to Britain’s colonial and post-colonial experience. None the less, the 1997 rhetoric employed the right sentiment at the right time in the interests of the right cause – the successful passage of what was to become the Human Rights Act 1998, which shines out from underneath a mountain of knee-jerk statutory graffiti as the proudest constitutional legacy of the present government.

If only human rights protection were a simple matter of human rights policy, this story, like the commissioner’s report, could end there and happily. Of course, a country’s record in this vital area is at least as much about how it responds to the tough stuff that resides in interior or home affairs policy. But here lies the rub. Gil-Robles’s report goes on:

“I was struck … by the frequency with which I heard calls for the need to rebalance rights protection, which it was argued, had shifted too far in favour of the individual to the detriment of the community. Criminal justice, asylum and the prevention of terrorism have been particular targets of such rhetoric, and a series of measures have been introduced in respect of them which … occasionally overstep this mark.”

I respectfully agree with his profound concern about the way in which the universal postwar human rights consensus has been repeatedly misrepresented or openly attacked in furtherance of any anti-terror, antisocial behaviour or asylum “policy” drafted on a beer mat by an enthusiastic special adviser of the day.

The negative political rhetoric matters, not just because of the indivisible nature of government comment and policy, but because of the lead that it gives to a media and wider public still relatively unfamiliar with the way in which the rights framework contains its own tried and tested mechanisms for providing balance and protection for competing individual, family, group and societal interests. To set human rights up against wider democratic good is inevitably to set them up for a fall, and to ignore the simple reality that a democracy without profound respect for individual rights and freedoms will quickly descend into little more than mob rule.

The commissioner goes on to warn that anti-terror control orders flout the presumption of innocence and are, in certain cases, likely to constitute punishments without trial. Like Liberty, he does not rule out some restrictions on a suspect’s liberty on a preventive basis for a limited period pending the bringing of proper and recognisable criminal charges. Further, he is right to condemn the admissibility of material gained by torture in British courts – a particularly distasteful element of both Belmarsh and control order regimes.

Every Labour member of parliament – old or new, inside government or not – should be particularly embarrassed by the ever-increasing firmness of Conservative and Liberal Democrat opposition to this policy. The next home secretary who inherits this embarrassment must find a way to dismantle it without delay.

Equally important, however, is the commissioner’s piercing critique of “asbomania” and the over-criminalisation of Britain’s youth. Like Liberty, he can conceive of a limited appropriate use of prohibitive orders to deal with criminality. But he fears the over-broad definition of antisocial behaviour, the fast-track to overcrowded prisons that Asbos have become and the vile and dangerous “naming and shaming” of youngsters in particular.

There are many sobering comments in this snapshot of Britain at the start of the 21st century. It is essential reading for politicians of all three main parties as the new round of legislation begins. Why was it necessary for a Council of Europe commissioner to tell a Labour government that forcing asylum seekers into destitution might be regarded as “inhumane”? These are good times for listening and reflecting on our hopes for the progressive consensus.