PM Warned Of EU Sanctions If Human Rights Act Altered

Britain risks sanctions from Europe over plans to water down human rights protections, to be unveiled by Boris Johnson today, an expert on EU law has warned.

- Rob Merrick, Andrew Woodcock

An assault on the Human Rights Act is at the heart of a Queen's Speech billed by the prime minister as a chance for the post-Brexit UK to shake off the fetters of EU regulation and strike out on its own in areas ranging from animal welfare to gene-editing and financial services.

But experts warn that replacing the Act - which embeds the European Convention on Human Rights in UK law – with a British Bill of Rights will have a devastating impact on the country's influence internationally. And they say it will force hundreds of Britons each year to take their cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), as they did before the HRA’s introduction in 1998, raising the prospect of repeated fines for the UK government from the Strasbourg judges.

“It perpetuates the sense that the UK is arrogant and wants to go down its own individualistic track," the chair of the Law Society's human rights committee Sue Willman told The Independent. "In theory, a British Bill of Rights could be an opportunity to introduce new additional rights, such as the right to a healthy environment which is currently being debated by the Council of Europe. But there aren't any proposals for additional rights in the proposals, just plans to erode the rights we already have.