British Bill Of Rights Will Let Us Take Back Control Of Key Issues

YOU wouldn’t know it from the constant clamour for new laws on pretty much every subject, but introducing legislation is anything but the point of good governance.

- Stephen Pollard

Indeed, more often than not, a law intended to tie up loose ends or focused on one issue ends up having entirely unintended consequences.

When Tony Blair brought in the Human Rights Act (HRA) in 1998 it was sold as a tidying-up exercise, enshrining into British law the European Convention on Human Rights to which we were already a signatory.

Before the HRA, litigants had to go to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to have a rights case heard, and that only after they had exhausted all British legal routes. All the HRA would do is have British judges take the convention’s rules into account.

Some tidying up exercise it has proved!

Rather, a series of new human rights concepts were introduced into British law, hugely expanding the role of the courts in taking decisions in which they never previously had a role. It’s wrong to blame judges for this, such as when they refuse to allow the deportation of a convicted rapist, as is happening with one ongoing case.

The rapist claims his human rights will be abused in the country to which he is being sent and thus, even if the judiciary disagrees over specific claims, the act offers any number of opportunities for delay on human rights grounds.