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Tories and Labour want out of ECHR!

  • 13-05-2006 3:55pm
    #1
    maidhc
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,726 ✭✭✭


    Tory pledge on Human Rights Act: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4765861.stm

    Human rights law 'may be changed':
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4768259.stm

    Considering Lord Steyn recently accused the UK government of having "authoritarian tendencies" does anyone else find this scary stuff?

    (note: The ECHR was drafted in the 1950s for the express purpose of making it more difficult for governments to act in an authoritarian manner,and was a response to the extreme abuses of power that took place in the 1930s and 1940s. One of its founding fathers was a member of the French Resistance, whose parents had been exported to Nazi concentration camps.)


Comments

  • #2
    Easygainer
    Closed Accounts Posts: 546 ✭✭✭Easygainer


    There's a big difference between the ECHR and the Human Rights Act 1998. The former is a cherter that the UK and many other countries immediately signed up to and has allowed recourse for individuals who have had an ECHR right breached to plead this befor the ECtHR. So, for instance, in 1981 in Dudgeon v UK, long before the HRA act, a homosexual took a case on privacy as protected under the ECHR.

    The HRA incorporated the ECHR roughly into domestic law. I'm not certain of the wording of that statute as we have a differently worded ECHR Act 2003, but essentially it requires courts to consider ECHR jurisprudence. In public law, for example, this meant adopting a high intensity of review for cases which involve an ECHR right. This would have been the case in issue here.

    If the UK were to remove the HRA, it does not mean that the UK could go about torturing people (Art 3). It would mean that the court's power of review which was intensified after the HRA for reviewing executive decisions (such as to deport people in this case) would be diminished - only if it were unreasonable could it be reviewed.

    It would be a backward step and it is unlikely to happen. Moreover, there is nothing to stop the courts continuing with the proportionality principle, for example, as it can operate independently of the HRA. Lord Steyn was most likely referring to anti-terror legislation which the House of Lords struck down in 2004 in the case of A(FC) v Sec. of State for Home Dept.


  • #3
    maidhc
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,726 ✭✭✭maidhc


    Easygainer wrote:
    The HRA incorporated the ECHR roughly into domestic law. I'm not certain of the wording of that statute as we have a differently worded ECHR Act 2003, but essentially it requires courts to consider ECHR jurisprudence.

    HRA and ECHR Act work in pretty much the same manner.

    Pulling the plug on the HRA would essentially mean the ECHR would only be binding on the UK in international law, or to be more blunt, of absolutely no significance within the jurisdiction. The proportionality principle is well and good, but very biased towards the whims of the executive, espcially when real or imaginary issues of crime and national security come into the equation.

    Lord Steyn was speaking in an extra judicial capacity after his retirement as a law lord.


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