Bill of Rights: how human rights laws are set to change

The government is to set out plans to replace the Human Rights Act with a new British Bill of Rights, just days after Europe’s human rights court blocked the deportation of asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda.

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) is to set a draft law before parliament on Wednesday, which will seek to abolish the Human Rights Act passed by the last Labour government and instead introduce a British Bill of Rights, as well as reduce the influence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

The draft bill

Politico reported that the MOJ “says its plan will set British courts free from the obligation to follow case law from the Strasbourg court in every circumstance”, as well as “make it clear that the UK’s own Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter on human rights issues”.

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It will also make explicit that interim measures from the ECHR – such as the one issued last week, which prevented the deportation flights from the UK to Rwanda – would “not be binding on British courts”, said the news site.

Other changes introduced by the bill will be stipulations that a court consider a claimant’s conduct “like a prisoner’s violent or criminal behaviour” when considering awarding damages, as well as making it easier to deport foreign criminals by “enabling future immigration laws which would force them to prove that a child or dependant would come to overwhelming, unavoidable harm if they were removed from the country”, reported The Guardian.

The government has “also said it would boost press freedom by elevating the right to freedom of expression over that of right to privacy” as well as “introducing a stronger test for courts to consider before they can order journalists to disclose their sources”.

Long-held Tory ambition

The introduction of a new British Bill of Rights has “long been a Conservative aspiration”, said the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason, who noted it had been promised in both the 2010 and 2015 Conservative manifestos.

Boris Johnson also promised reform in his party’s 2019 manifesto, where he pledged to update the act to ensure “proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government”.

At the root of the proposed changes are Tory “gripes” with the Human Rights Act introduced by Labour in 1998 which introduced the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, said Mason.

Labour’s “rationale at the time” was that “being subject to the convention without a domestic Human Rights Act meant the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, France, couldn’t be moderated by the UK courts”.

But the government now argues that “the effect of the Human Rights Act has been to gold-plate the decisions of the court”.

Flagship immigration policy ‘on ice’

The bill follows anger in the Conservative Party at the ECHR’s move to block Rwanda-bound deportation flights, ultimately putting the party’s “flagship migration policy on ice”, said Politico.

A senior government source admitted to The Guardian last week that the ruling had been a driving factor in introducing the new bill.

“Some of the problems or the challenges we’ve had (with respect to Rwanda) reinforced and strengthened the case for what we’re doing,” the source told the paper.

Human Rights Act will be ‘fatally weakened’

The move has come under heavy criticism from human rights campaigners who accuse the government of systematically eroding human rights in an attempt to make itself “untouchable” by the courts. They argue that a new British Bill of Rights will not give people the same protections afforded to them under current legislation.��

Jun Pang, policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, told The Guardian: “Time and time again the government has been trying to change the rules in order to make itself untouchable, and the Rwanda scheme is a really good example of that.

“This is the latest example, but there’s countless examples of the government clamping down on people’s rights, whether on the streets, in the courts, at the ballot box or in parliament.

“The bill of rights will result in everyone’s rights being eroded and everyone’s protections being reduced but obviously with the most disproportionate effects on already marginalised communities.”

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive, said it was “troubling” to see the government “prepared to damage respect for the authority of the European Court of Human Rights because of a single decision that it doesn’t like.

“This is not about tinkering with rights, it’s about removing them,” he added.

“From the Hillsborough disaster, to the right to a proper Covid inquiry, to the right to challenge the way police investigate endemic violence against women, the Human Rights Act is the cornerstone of people power in this country. It’s no coincidence that the very politicians it holds to account want to see it fatally weakened.”

Dominic Raab, the justice secretary, has said that a new bill of rights “will strengthen our UK tradition of freedom whilst injecting a healthy dose of common sense into the system”.

He said: “These reforms will reinforce freedom of speech, enable us to deport more foreign offenders and better protect the public from dangerous criminals.”