Whole emphasis is wrong
I am against a written statement of rights, whatever one calls it: bill, constitution ....
Why? Because any form of list is a limitation. It means that anything not listed is not allowed or guaranteed. It means an aeon of legal argument about what the list means as individuals interpret it and time and fashion pass. Who on earth are you or anyone else to tell me what my rights are? Am I vulnerable to legal sanction if my actions, however innocent, harmless, good even, are not listed as rights that I can exercise?
To me it is blatantly obvious that, whereas it is necessary for society to say what is not allowed in order to live as part of that society (e.g. murder, theft, fraud) or to state specific obligations (e.g. pay taxes), it is very big-brotherish to tell me what I am allowed to do, with the clear implication that nothing else is allowed, whether through oversight, carelessness or malice during the drawing up of the list.
It is clear to me that it is restriction of rights that needs to be debated in depth and that no earthly power can "grant" me rights that all people are born into, with or without a state. Would an ID card be a right or a requirement or a limitation of my freedom? Does a legal requirement for one translate into a right for me to be given one (free of charge if it is both a right and a requirement)? Would I have no "right" to refuse one or do other rights depend upon holding one?
Just what is "reasonable" or "appropriate"? In whose judgement, by what measure? In today's British economy and health service, one may claim that two years on a waiting list for a hip replacement or heart surgery are "reasonable". Luckily, I live in a country where more than a week or two is thought unreasonable.
A final couple of thoughts: how on earth can one guarantee by statute such things as access to a health service, that depend upon the state of the society that must provide it? I sometimes think the US constitution is particularly nonsensical: some things along the lines "right to the pursuit of happiness" as if happiness can be defined in some universal way. And just what may I do in that pursuit? What would a right to adequate housing mean? A three bedroom house in the shires for an average family? A bed in a hostel? Who judges such things?
I gather that the former USSR had an admirable, written constitution, one of the best. Propaganda aside, the USA has some of the worst, most abject poverty, corruption and living conditions (and daily displays terrible abuses of power) as well as some of the best material conditions and examples of freedom.