Peter Black has beaten me to commenting on Theresa May's desire to take the Human Rights Act 1998 off the UK statute book. However, I would just like to emphasise that if the HRA were still in place, we would still be bound by the European Convention on Human Rights. Repeal of the HRA would mean a return to the situation where the aggrieved had to take their case to Strasbourg instead of having it settled here. The HRA enabled complainants to cut their costs and cut the time spent in waiting for a decision (there is currently a huge backlog in Strasbourg). In view of Lord Carlile's assessment of European Court of Human Rights judges, the quality of decision-making is probably better, too.
We must not let a few hard (and possibly apocryphal) cases, such as Theresa May cited in her speech today, deprive justice to the majority of deserving cases.
No comments:
Post a Comment