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Near Commonwealth House (HQ of the Games) – just in case anyone goes hungry
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Theresa May and
her selfish attack
on human rights
Alistair Hayes
The Human Rights Act 1998 is an efficiency measure. It allows British courts to make certain human rights decisions so that they don’t always have to be heard at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The European Convention on Human Rights (1950) laid out our fundamental rights and the Human Rights Act integrated them within our domestic courts. Regrettably, the last two years have brought a widening assault against the Human Rights Act.
It is my view, firstly, that human rights require the protection from political meddling extended by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Human Rights Act. Secondly, that current criticism of the Human Rights Act is motivated by an effort to exert political control over the judiciary. And finally, that calls for a ‘British Bill of Rights’ to replace the Human Rights Act are fundamentally misguided.
Human rights hold a special status. This status was first enshrined, on an international level, in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the Geneva Convention of 1949. Human rights also find themselves codified in the constitutions of many countries; the United States Bill of Rights and the German Basic Laws are two such examples. In Britain, the un-codified and ‘evolutionary’ nature of our constitution has favoured the principle of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ above all else.
In the history of our democracy the British parliament has had seemingly unrestricted law-making power. In his book ‘Reform of the Constitution’, Owen Hood Phillips observes that our human rights would be better served away from political interference, the whims of the majority and the so-called ‘public interest’. Ronald Dworkin, a prominent philosopher, explained that ‘there are many different theories about what is best for a community…rights are best understood as trumps over these background considerations’. I whole-heartedly subscribe to this view. The ‘rights as trumps’ perspective is best realised when our basic human rights are protected within the judicial sphere, as they are under codified constitutions; the ECHR and the Human Rights Act achieved this for Britain.
Despite the important achievements of the ECHR and the Human Rights Act as a pairing, as an individual piece of legislation the Human Rights Act is rather more humble. The Act was introduced to allow British courts to apply the rules contained within the European Convention on Human Rights. The Human Rights Act gave British courts the power to interpret primary legislation in a way that is compatible with the ECHR. The immediate effect was to save British petitioners from the purgatory of the 155,000-case backlog at the European Court of Human Rights, and to save the taxpayer the massive cost of trying cases there.
Theresa May’s criticism is fundamentally selfish and short sighted. When these rights only existed in domestic laws it was a lot easier for the government to over-rule them whenever it was politically convenient.
Alistair Hayes works for the Refugee Survival Trust. This award-winning paper was presented at the recent Young Scotland Programme
