|
Sunday, 25 April 2010 12:37 |
|
Much as I agree with your general outlook on human rights, with all due respect, repealing the Human Rights Act would not lead to human rights vanishing from the UK, and you're looking at things a bit simplistically. The courts did a decent job of protecting them before; admittedly, should the HRA go and not be replaced, they would of course have no legally binding, objective text which they could use, but all the HRA does is incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into law, and judges have been thinking similarly to the ECHR about rights for decades now. The Convention rights would still be used as a point of reference (as they were for a long time before they were officially legislated into law here, if you will). After all, the HoL/Supreme Court has been using the thing since 2000 - old habits die hard. It's not as if judges would go 'Phew! We can do away with all this human rights nonsense!' There is also plenty of case law pertaining to human rights pre-HRA.
The danger is, of course, and as you rightly spot, that the Tories would shove through a Bill of Rights (or at least that's what they claim). Two things could happen.
A: The Bill actually ends up pretty much being a rewording of the current Human Rights Act - same rights, similar protections, and cases can still after all go to the European Court of Human Rights.
B: The Bill is radically different and protects rights badly, or indeed does not recognise the existence of certain rights. The Tories face a political and potentially legal shitstorm from the EU for, effectively, abolishing a perfectly good, useful statute conferring positive legal rights on citizens and replacing it with something awful. I cannot begin to imagine the damage done to our international reputation should this occur, and the Tories know it all too well.
As far as I'm concerned, either the Tories will be too scared (or, god forbid, intelligent) to do what they propose, or if they do, they will create legislation almost identical to what was there previously. Sorry for being so wordy.
|
