“Anyone who is in the UK for any reason has fundamental human rights which government and public authorities are legally obliged to respect. These became law as part of the Human Rights Act 1998.”
The Human Rights Act 1998 gives further legal effect in the UK to the fundamental rights and freedoms contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. The wording above reflects a desire that all in the UK, whether British, EU national or not, are protected by the provisions of the Act.
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is an international treaty to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe. The convention entered into force on 3 September 1953. All Council of Europe member states are party to the Convention and new members are expected to ratify the convention at the earliest opportunity. It is worth noting that the Convention was drafted with substantial and significant involvement by the UK government of the day.
The Convention established the European Court of Human Rights. Any person whose rights have been violated under the Convention by a state party can take a case to the Court. The decisions of the Court are not automatically legally binding, but the Court does have the power to award damages.
Number of court cases involving Human Rights Act rises by a third
The Times reports: “Terrorism and deportation cases have fuelled the first rise for seven years in court cases using the Human Rights Act, figures published today show. Human rights challenges involving immigration, asylum and deportation cases rose by 34 per cent — and are predicted to rise again this year. The figures come days after Jonathan Evans, the head of M15, hinted that the courts were being used to undermine the fight against terrorism. The rise in such cases was an inevitable result of efforts by the Government to deal with potential terrorist threats, he added.”
Stephen Grosz, head of public law and human rights at Bindman & Partners, notes that the Home Office is the biggest ‘repeat defendant’ and states “Measures against terrorists in a democratic society have to be tempered by respect for human rights. Otherwise, what are we protecting?”
The Head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, took a slightly different stance “….accusations that MI5 colluded in torture would be used by the country’s enemies as “propaganda to undermine our will and ability to confront them”.
Members of the public, not surprisingly or unreasonably, rarely trouble to look at the detail in the law – law enacted by government, but, I accept, not always with parliamentary scrutiny. Members of the public and tabloid journalists keen to ‘rally the people’ tend to take an ’emotive’ line.
A few examples from the Times ‘comment’ section’ to illustrate the point…
I’m sceptical that the Conservative party would be able to come up with a list of unalienable rights that aren’t basically what the drafters of the European Convention already mentioned.
It really looks to be effectively a rotating the tires exercise to me.
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funny: a couple of minutes ago, i wrote a comment about times readers and their limited understanding. then i read this.
oh yeah!
I’m not sure Ben Holloway’s off-the-mark there. After all, this government does like to see how far it can get away with breaking the law (Jack Straw?) and has introduced so many pieces of legislation and criminal offences that there are plenty of opportunities for lawyers to get stuck in. It’s just a shame they’ve trashed legal aid.
I’m not sure about this. Not only does The Times appear to have confused the Security Service with, well, loads of things, but has anybody else actually seen this survey? It seems to me that this is only referring to reported cases, which is perhaps not surprising given that this is a large part of Sweet & Maxwell’s business. I suspect the headline in The Times is just plain wrong – if the rise has been “fuelled” by a 34% increase in terrorism and immigration cases, doesn’t it seem unlikely that the total number of cases has risen by a third? Just guessing, but the FT report is probably more accurate – that says an overall 6% rise, and actually makes it clear that it’s referring to reported cases.
It all depends on how you look at it, these figures appear to be based on just a selection of cases. Take another selection of cases (eg civil human rights appeals heard by the House of Lords (p. 21)) and there’s a huge increase in 2005 and another small one in 2008.
To get a real idea surely one would need to look at all cases, especially the JR permission stage, which is where most HRA cases flicker briefly before being extinguished like so many cheap Ikea tea lights. Back in 2003 research for the PLP (p. 12) suggested that HRA issues were raised in about half of all JR applications. By my reckoning there were around 7,000 JR applications in both 2007 and 2008. If that was continued in 2009 and if half of those raised HRA issues (both big ifs, I admit) then it dwarves the total number of cases in the Sweet & Maxwell survey (348 according to the FT), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that an analysis of those figures would show the same rise.
Sorry that’s a bit long winded and I’m sure there’s a mistake in there somewhere to make me look foolish for my earlier pedantry, but I just think it’s rather a poor approach from The Times. Whether there are too many meritless HRA claims (or defences) being run is entirely another question 😉