Human Rights Act Review: Incompatibility and Political Expediency

London: The window has closed for submissions to the Independent Human Rights Act Review (IHRAR). For anyone in the government hoping that these submissions would pave the way for the review to recommend wholesale reform of the Human Rights Act (HRA), their hopes will have been dashed. The submissions are harmonious in their rejection of the need for any reform, praising the HRA for ‘bringing rights home’ and for sparking a dialogue between the courts, the government and Parliament on what rights mean. Given that the government set up this review in the hope of curtailing, not buttressing, the judicial protection of rights, this hardly comes as a surprise. Trusting Boris Johnson’s government to meaningfully reform the protection of human rights in the UK would be like inviting a fox into a chicken coop, locking it inside, and then wondering why the regular supply of eggs had dried up.

But while these institutions, ranging from campaigning organisations like Amnesty to legal thinktanks like the Oxford Human Rights Hub, are right to reject the notion of a government with the populist instincts of Johnson’s reforming the HRA, they err in concluding that the HRA adequately protects human rights. While recognising that rights are fundamental to any liberal democracy, they fail to emphasise that as part of this, there must be meaningful remedies for their violation which the HRA fails to provide, preferring to prioritise the supremacy of Parliament instead. This reflects the concern of the Blair government to enhance the protection of rights in the UK but with outrage upsetting the UK’s constitutional structure, which has Parliament, not the courts and not human rights, at its centre. Consequently, instead of allowing courts to strike down legislation that contravenes human rights, as is the case in many liberal democracies, whether Germany, Israel or the Netherlands, the HRA limits the courts, giving them the power to remedy some violations, but not all.

Read more: Nicholas Reed Langen, Justice Gap, https://is.gd/pirWjP