Tomorrow Downing Street will unveil broad plans to overturn the power of the European Court of Human Rights just days after a Strasbourg judge blocked the deportation of asylum seekers from the United Kingdom to Rwanda.
The abolition of the Human Rights Act (HRA), including the reduction of the influence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), will be presented to parliament in what the government described as a reaffirmation of British sovereignty.
But activists and top lawyers denounced the historic move, saying the government was systematically eroding people’s rights in an attempt to make themselves “untouchable” by the courts.
The new British Bill of Rights will not have the same protections, they fear.
Sacha Deshmukh, Executive Director of Amnesty International in the United Kingdom, said: “The [Strasbourg] The court’s intervention in Rwanda’s deportation last week was an example of its key role in ensuring that basic human rights are not violated, without saying anything more than that the UK should stop deportations to Rwanda in awaiting the outcome of our national judicial review process.
“It is very worrying that the UK government is willing to damage respect for the authority of the European Court of Human Rights by a single decision that it does not like.
“It’s not about playing with rights, it’s about suppressing them.
“From the Hillsborough disaster, to the right to a proper Covid investigation, to the right to challenge the way police investigate endemic violence against women, the Human Rights Act is the cornerstone of people’s power in this It is no coincidence that the very politicians to whom he holds accountable want to see him fatally weakened. “
A senior government source admitted that Rwanda’s ruling last week, which humiliated ministers, had been a factor.
“Some of the problems or challenges we have had (with respect to Rwanda) have strengthened and strengthened the case of what we are doing,” the source said.
The government said the bill would make it clear that the ECtHR’s interim measures such as the one published last week that prevented the flight from expulsion to Rwanda are not binding on UK courts.
The source said that “sovereignty has been fragmented and questioned for many years by a combination of the EU and other supranational bodies, including the Strasbourg court.”
However, UK courts are not required to follow ECHR decisions and critics say other changes will have more significant negative impacts.
Stephanie Boyce, president of the Bar Association of England and Wales, said: right.
“The bill will create an acceptable class of human rights abuses in the UK, through the introduction [under a new permission stage] a ban on claims that are not considered to cause “significant disadvantages.”
“It is a setback for British justice. Authorities may begin to consider some rights violations acceptable, as they could no longer be challenged under the Bill of Rights despite being against the law.
“In general, the bill would give the state more unlimited power over the people, a power that would then belong to all future governments, whatever their ideology.”
Jun Pang, Liberty’s chief policy officer and campaigner, said:
“This is the latest example, but there are countless examples of government repression of human rights, whether in the streets, in the courts, at the polls or in parliament.
“The Bill of Rights will lead to the erosion of everyone’s rights and the reduction of everyone’s protections, but obviously with the most disproportionate effects on already marginalized communities.”
The government said the bill would ensure that the courts take into account the relevant conduct of a plaintiff, such as the violent or criminal behavior of a prisoner, when awarding damages, and will facilitate the deportation of foreign criminals enabling future immigration laws that would force them to prove that a child or dependent. they would suffer overwhelming and inevitable damage if they were removed from the country.
He also said he would boost press freedom by elevating the right to freedom of expression above the right to privacy, which has restricted information in recent years, and by introducing stronger evidence for courts to consider before to be able to order journalists to reveal their sources.
The UK will remain a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which the HRA incorporated into national law, but the government said the act had led the courts to “reduce, reinterpret or dilute the effects of the law. primary “.
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said: “The Bill of Rights will strengthen our tradition of British freedom while injecting a good dose of common sense into the system.
“These reforms will strengthen freedom of expression, allow us to deport more foreign criminals and better protect the public from dangerous criminals.”
Professor Philippe Sands QC, who was part of the 2013 Commission on a Bill of Rights, said: “Mr Raab takes a nationalist and xenophobic turn to the idea of human rights, eliminating one of its most fundamental principles: basic human rights exist for everyone, and must be demanded at the request of all. world history is buzzing … and all the corpses that were believed to be buried are coming out. “