The
abolition and replacement of the Human Rights Act (HRA) with a British Bill of Rights and
Responsibilities has been a longstanding policy commitment of the Conservative
Party, and was part of our manifesto on which we were elected on in May.
Our
planned British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities will completely change the
way in which our human rights laws work.
It
will retain the principles of the original Human Rights Convention. But it will
put clearly into our law limitations on where and how it can be applied. There
will be a whole range of caveats. There will be a triviality test stopping
human rights laws being used for minor matters. We will limit the reach of
human rights claims to the UK, preventing cases being brought against our Armed
Forces overseas, that just stops them doing their job and keeping us safe.
There will also be a proper balance between rights and responsibilities.
Crucially,
we will stop Article 8, the Right to Family Life, being used for purposes it
was never intended. It should not be used by an individual to say that their
right to family life allows them to override the law that applies to every
other citizen, for example travellers occupying green belt land and claiming
human rights trump planning laws. Or a similar situation with a foreign
criminal and our immigration laws. Everyone must be subject to the same law of
the land, no exceptions.
Labour passing the HRA in 1998 was a mistake, we had a long history of human rights long before the HRA was past. But critically it was under our control and not foreign judges. It is time we corrected that.
