11th July 2022

In December 2021, Justice Minister Dominic Raab declared HRA is “subject to abuse” and unveiled his plans to reform the law, alleging that “the act in practice was ineffective” because the HRA is being employed by “criminals” and repeal of HRA would “deter spurious human rights claims”.

The HRA (1998) is the UK law that compels the government to ensure our rights as citizens are upheld.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has commonly used the term “foreign criminals” relating to individual cases where deportation has been halted due to Article 8 of the HRA “right to family life” being used defensively by claimants with family ties in the UK. Raab has spoken about reforming the law to remove  “wokery and political correctness”.

This ‘unveiling’ followed the Government commissioned Independent Human Rights Act Review (October 2021), where it was decided that repeal of the HRA was not necessary (although some reforms were needed).

The HRA protects our human rights and any pro-abolition movement, or its replacement with an inferior, less democratic “British Bill of Rights”, is quite a scary prospect. 

In essence, Raab’s reforms would “allow judges to dismiss ECHR rulings rather than follow them “blindly”. By wiping away HRA and re-writing a fundamental law, the government could better tackle issues such as the global migrant crisis, and deal with “foreign criminals'' without the hindrance of lawful human rights arguments being made and easily heard.

So, what has the HRA ever done for you?

Your rights are protected by the HRA. Article 10 of the HRA, for example, protects your right to hold your own opinions and to express them freely without interference from the government. This includes the right to express your views out loud, as I am doing in this article. This act democratically protects your right to protest, create art, literature and publish your opinion. Article 3 of the HRA protects you from mental or physical torture, and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including the risk of facing such treatment through the process of deportation or extradition to another country.

These rights are fundamental for a free and liberal democratic society and are human, not just British, rights that protect a free press and journalists from interference by the state.

The UK would be the first country to repeal a human rights law. Take that in for a moment. If the UK is “world-leading” as politicians brag, should the world follow suit and should we revert to darker times in our histories?

Repeal of the HRA would also affect the peace process in Northern Ireland, because HRA played an integral role in healing “the troubles” and sustaining peace.

What Raab meant by “ineffective” is that the HRA prevents parliament or the judiciary from breaking the law themselves, when dealing with home and “foreign” criminals, because of the legislature created in 1998, under former Labour PM Sir Tony Blair KG. It prevents radical new laws being created that would interfere with our human rights and any proposed incompatible  legislation has to go through the parliament for amendment and scrutiny - which once scrutinised by parliament, for the people, cannot stand and has to abide by the Strasbourg rulings.

Raab’s proposal to repeal the HRA is a blatant, political “power grab” and reform would enable the MoJ to do as it pleases with criminals and migrants. It could be claimed that The Justice Minister cares more about his authority and ministerial power than he does about our rights and the power we have and may need in a Britain without HRA.

Not a lot has happened since the review which endeavoured to explore defects; those being in “the relationship between domestic courts and European Court of Human Rights” and “the impact of the Human Rights Act on the relationship between the judiciary, the executive and the legislature.”  

What I interpret this as is new laws parliament would like to pass and enforce can’t be enforced effectively without interference of what it calls “spurious” HRA claims – claims that will inevitably arise from the new laws being put in effect, new laws that have aspects that have the potential to collide and are incompatible, in individual cases, with the HRA - such as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (The Policing Act) PCSC (2022). 

Stephanie Boyce, President of the Law Society said, “any changes to the HRA should be led by evidence and not driven by political rhetoric.”

Liberty – a charity that describes itself as “ordinary people standing up to power” said this about the new PCSO that came into effect in April 2022.

“The Act makes wide-ranging changes across the criminal justice system in areas including police powers, judicial procedures and offender rehabilitation. It will also have a serious impact on human rights, particularly the right to protest.” (libertyhumanrights.org.uk)

Most of the public order provisions in the Act, which affect our right to protest, came into force on 28 June 2022.

Allow me to be blatant. In my opinion this government cannot deal with the international migrant crisis without breaching HRA; a British failure that is impossible to white-wash over with political excuse or rhetoric, in an age obsessed with social-media where recent generations are erudite in what their human rights are, what the law is, two decades since HRA was given to us. I believe Raab doesn’t like it because it makes his ministry look weak. The UK penal system is failing HRA law, every day. If the HRA law is no longer there ‘to go by’, the penal system under this Conservative government would no longer be failing HRA and committing human rights abuses daily. Is it that simple? 

Sacha Deshmukh, CEO of Amnesty International, perfectly illustrates the cavalier nature of this “power grab” and watering down of the HRA. Deshmukh, said “human rights are not sweets’ ministers can ‘pick and choose from’ and the ‘aggressive’ attempt to roll-back the law needs to be stopped.” adding “If ministers move ahead with plans to water down the HRA and override judgments with which they disagree, they risk aligning themselves with authoritarian regimes around the world.”

Currently prisoners and migrants are protected by Article 3.

Raab's white paper that proposes to repeal the act would allow for many changes to be made in how criminals and migrants are managed and everybody's rights would be impacted by repeal, not just criminals and “foreigners” to the UK.

The MoJ has identified prisoners’ voting rights, and the necessity for police forces to issue Osman Warnings to gang members who are “at threat” of assassination, as areas of “political correctness gone mad” with regard to unwanted “interference” from Strasbourg.

Landmark court rulings made previously, taking into consideration HRA, not “blindly” as government put it, but with common-sense, ethics and integrity include cases such as LGBT military veterans being re-awarded their medals after they were removed from them because of their protected characteristic – sexuality; and unmarried women rightfully receiving a widow’s pension after the death of their partners. These are all compromised by repeal of HRA. So is your privacy and freedom to protest and access to justice blocked.

Over a decade ago the IPP (Imprisonment for Public Protection) sentence existed - IPPs are indeterminate sentences. There is no limitation to them. The sentence is uncertain and psychologically impacting. They were created to lawfully hold someone in prison who posed a significant risk of causing serious harm to the public until all risk was eradicated. Segregation from society and community for decades does not reduce risk but arguably increases it, because no rehabilitation or opportunity is given to adjust into a community and therefore the IPP prisoner seldom is given liberty again.

Due to the inhuman treatment and torture of the individual whose release is always uncertain or never-coming and exceeds current sentencing guidelines and limitations for the index offences disproportionately, and, due to the psychological harm caused by the torturous prison sentence, it was deemed unlawful, as it breached HRA law.

The government's issue is that over 2000 IPP prisoners are still locked-up a decade since the IPP sentence was deemed unlawful by the Courts.

Removal of the HRA would ‘deal’ with this criminal issue. There is considerable pressure on government to deal with a dramatic increase in death, assault and suicide over the prison estate, the illegal treatment of prisoners during the COVID-19 crisis, including prolonged solitary confinement, deprivation, inadequate access to required health care, poor and dangerous management of COVID-19 outbreaks across the prison estate. Restricting prisoners and family from having contact interfered with “right to family life” of the HRA. There is substantial public pressure at government level from The Howard League for Penal Reform and Prison Reform Trust- charitable organisations, who are using the HRA to rightly hold the government to account and push for very different reforms to what Raab proposes.

“The HRA has changed many lives for the better. It must be protected from political interference intent on making state power unaccountable.” said Liberty’s Director, Martha Spurrier.

This is why the HRA should not be taken from us, because accountability needs to take place where corruption exists; in government, in ministerial positions of power like Raab's, and the HRA gives us that power, to ensure those individuals in positions of power, or government bodies, like the police or the Home Office or the MoJ itself, are held accountable for their own abuses of power, corruption and law-breaking whilst law-making.

If a law does infringe upon the HRA it is out-of-touch, unethical, immoral and authoritarian. Just because the HRA is a headache for this government, and repeal talks have exposed there is fear within the Cabinet concerning HRA and post-pandemic human rights claims,  don’t let Machiavellian politicians convince you they’re doing it for your best interests - they’re not!

Taking away any human rights law is not giving you anything. That’s common sense, Right Honourable Dominic Raab MP.

Abolition would concentrate power within this government, especially for Raab, and his influence; he is Deputy Prime Minister after all.

Lawyers have described proposed reforms to the Human Rights Act as dangerous and I agree.

Law exists to protect democracy and the HRA is fundamental in protecting both democracy and us! What Justice Minister Raab is planning and promising to do, under PM Boris Johnson Conservative government will harm democracy – it will infringe upon our human rights, because we possess them already.

About the author:

Walthari Nikolaj is studying BA (Hons) Politics, Philosophy and Economics Q45. He wrote the winning essay for the annual Perrie Lecture Committee Essay Competition 2021 which received some critical acclaim from a wide range of individuals. He is also a contemporary poet and is published regularly in the UK, Canada and America.