Britain’s governing Conservative Party is claiming, not for the first time, that it will reform human rights rules with a new British Bill of Rights, after judges blocked the removal of a murderer and several paedophiles.
Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, who also serves as Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, claims that a new British Bill of Rights will partially supersede Labour’s Human Rights Act. Raab appears to be following in the footsteps of former Prime Minister David Cameron, who failed to deliver the bill or keep similar conservative-sounding promises on reducing immigration and reforming Britain’s relationship with the European Union.
Well over six years after then-Prime Minister Cameron’s empty promise that he would fix the “complete mess” that human rights law in Britain had become, the Tories were embarrassed last month by judges springing some 47 foreign criminals and illegal aliens including a murderer, a kidnapper, and multiple paedophiles from a deportation flight to Jamaica so they could pursue eleventh-hour human rights appeals against their removal — a far from isolated incident.
Now Johnson’s number two in government is once again claiming that a British Bill of Rights will solve the ever-worsening deportations situation, writing in The Times that he will “revise the HRA [Human Rights Act] and replace it with a bill of rights” that will “restore some balance, and common sense to the system”.
Citing a recent ruling in which a foreigner who does not pay child support and has a conviction for battery against his former partner was spared deportation by appealing to his European “right to a private and family life”, Raab claimed, perhaps somewhat delusionally, that the “[t]he fault lies with the HRA — not the judges.”
“The calibre of our judges is globally renowned,” he asserted, suggesting that reforms ending “the duty on UK courts to take into account the case law of the [European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg] which has at various points been applied as a duty to slavishly follow Strasbourg” would lead to better decisions.
“We’ll make crystal clear that the UK Supreme Court, not Strasbourg, has the ultimate authority to interpret the law in the UK,” he added — indicating that the Johnson administration intends to strengthen the Tony Blair-created top court, not abolish it as was hinted after it issues rulings interpreted by many as an attempt to sabotage Brexit.
Why the British judiciary, which has shown nothing but enthusiasm for the European Court of Human Rights and the Human Rights Act, generally speaking, might be inclined to adopt a more hawkish stance on immigration was not really explained — and indeed Home Secretary Priti Patel is believed to have clashed with Raab behind the scenes over his proposals, which are not nearly so strong as she would like.
Tinkering with the Human Rights Act will not change the fact that Britain is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights and subject to the European Court of Human Rights, in any event.
“The European Court of Human Rights will retain the final word because the UK is part of the convention… and has a treaty obligation to abide by judgments against the UK,” specialist lawyer Adam Wagner told The Times.
Nevertheless, some in the legal profession appear to be opposed to even Raab’s relatively weak reforms, with human rights lawyer Schona Jolly QC complaining to the newspaper that they have “all the hallmarks of a cynical attempt to water down rights protections, including for some of the most vulnerable in our society, under the nationalist guise of reframing the arguments about what is quintessentially British”.
Whether she would include the murderer and paedophiles who lately escaped deportation among “the most vulnerable in our society” was not clear from the report.
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