Save the Human Rights Act

This week the Deputy Prime Minister  Dominic Raab promised to “overhaul” the Human Rights Act.

The Justice Secretary said Boris Johnson had given him the task of rewriting the law when he moved him from the Foreign Office in September’s reshuffle.

In his speech to the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, Mr Raab highlighted the case of a drug dealer “convicted of beating his ex-partner” who claimed the right to family life to avoid deportation.

“It is absolutely perverse that someone guilty of domestic abuse could claim the right to family life to trump the public’s interest in deporting him from this country.

“We’ve got to bring this nonsense to an end.”

At a fringe event, Mr Raab said the problem was with the powers the domestic legislation had given to judges, rather than the European Convention on Human Rights itself.

“The problem is not the convention, it’s the way it has been interpreted and in particular the licence given to the courts in this country under the Human Rights Act to adopt, through judicial legislation, ever more elastic interpretations of rights.”

Raab who did not back up his claims with any actual hard evidence also has history on this subject, as far back as 2009, he said: “I don’t support the Human Rights Act and I don’t believe in economic and social rights,” 

And, in a book composed by Mr Raab around the same time, entitled ‘The Assault on Liberty: What Went Wrong’, he contended the 1998 enactment had prompted a large number of new cases in the courts.

“The spread of rights has become contagious and, since the Human Rights Act, opened the door to vast new categories of claims, which can be judicially enforced against the government through the courts.

The Act had allowed UK law to be trumped by the European courts," Mr Raab claimed, while the boundaries between parliament, government and the judiciary had been blurred.

I don't believe foe one second that Raab and his nasty party cares about the human  rights of anyone, long have they advocated their removal from ordinary people. Both Labour and senior legal figures have raised fears that Mr Raab’s appointment is to allow him to drive through more dramatic changes to the HRA than planned by his sacked predecessor, Robert Buckland.

 Shadow justice secretary David Lammy said: “After 11 years of Tory Government, court backlogs have reached record levels, violence and self-harm in prisons have soared, rape convictions have plummeted, and many women have lost confidence in the criminal justice system. 

“Yet instead of addressing any of these problems, the new Justice Secretary chose to focus on vague threats to take away ordinary people’s rights.”

Mr Raab said the move would bring “common sense” to the justice system, but campaign group Amnesty International warned “politicians should not be removing the rights of ordinary people with the stroke of a pen”.

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s CEO, said: “The Human Rights Act has been key to some of the biggest justice fights over the last 30 years – from Hillsborough and the Mid Staffs hospital deaths, to years of human rights violations against women activists in the Spycops scandal. 

“The deeply unacceptable delay to setting up a public inquiry into the Government’s handling of the Covid pandemic is just one example of why the Human Rights Act is so important."

 Human rights group Liberty has previously hit out at the idea, saying it was “designed to create more stigma and division”.

The fact is the Human Rights Act protects each and every one of us from the unlawful actions of the State and public authorities.We can’t let the Government weaken our human rights.

 The Human Rights Act 1998 sets out the fundamental rights and freedoms that everyone in the UK is entitled to. It incorporates the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into domestic British law. The Human Rights Act came into force in the UK in October 2000.

It requires all public bodies (like courts, police, local authorities, hospitals and publicly funded schools) and other bodies carrying out public functions to respect and protect your human rights.

In practice it means that Parliament will nearly always make sure that new laws are compatible with the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights (although ultimately Parliament is sovereign and can pass laws which are incompatible). The courts will also, where possible, interpret laws in a way which is compatible with Convention rights.

The Human Rights Act makes our rights real. It places an obligation on public authorities to respect everyone’s rights, meaning very few people will ever have to use the Act themselves. But, if public authorities don’t live up to that standard, the Human Rights Act gives ordinary people the power to enforce their rights in British courts.

It helped families of those who died in the Hillsborough disaster to get justice for their loved ones. 

It has enabled disabled people to challenge the removal of their benefit payments. 

It has been used by families to secure investigations into the deaths of their family members after poor treatment and neglect.

It helped LGBT veterans get their medals back after they were kicked out of the armed forces.

It has protected people’s privacy, freedom of expression, right to practice their religion, and so much more.

The Human Rights Act has made many people’s lives better. The Government’s attack on the Act is nothing more than a cynical attempt to hide from accountability for its actions.

Along with the Policing Bill which will criminalise protesters, the Judicial Review Bill which will make it harder for people to challenge injustice in court, and plans for mandatory voter ID which will prevent hundreds of thousands of people from taking part in elections, the Government’s threat to the Human Rights Act is part of a wider plan to make itself untouchable.

Politicians should not be removing the rights of ordinary people with the stroke of a pen. The Human Rights Act is ours, scrapping it will take away the rights of everyone, and it is the most vulnerable that will suffer the most.
A useful reminder of whether the Act needs to change, or should remain is to look at the list of rights protected by the Act and ask yourself ,"Which one would I give away? Which one would I not want for myself or for members of my family?"the right to life? the right not to be tortured? the right to a fair trial? http:/legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1  
Sometimes we can't appreciate the value of something until it is taken away.We have to stand up for the Act.The proposal is simply appalling and unacceptable, trying to get rid of the Human Rights Act is a blatant open  wholesale assault on democratic rights and must be opposed, it ia part of our protection to be able to function as citizens in a democratic country.

 Surely it can't have escaped the Tory's attention that our country has seen a spike in hate and division recently, considering this they should not be  pouring yet more public money, into scrapping human rights and equality protections that are needed to be respected now more than ever.People power got us these rights, and now it’s up to us to stand up for them again.We can prove public opinion is against scrapping the Human Rights Act - and show we’re prepared to fight for it unless we plan on giving up being human. We must convince the government to nip these plans in the bud once and for all. These rights ensure we are all entitled to dignity and respect without fear of discrimination