May 11, 2015

The Conservatives and the Human Rights Act

editor:	Gurmeet Singh

Voting matters: vote. Voting doesn’t matter: don’t. This neatly sums up the state of our debate on democratic deficits in industrialised States. The counter-argument to this basically runs: we don’t actually have democracy, so voting, while not unimportant, legitimises the very system that ensures its overall ineffectuality. The author (while taking the latter view) is not cynical enough to imagine that it “doesn’t matter who gets in”; they’re not all the same, no matter how in thrall they are to neoliberal forces.

Which makes it even more infuriating (for the author, at least) that on Friday, his fellow Britons voted for five more years of Conservative-led government. There’s much to be said about the voting system of the UK and its systematic biases, and about the rise of right-wing sentiment in the UK (perhaps too much has been said about the general ‘meanness’ of voters who vote for a pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, anti-public services government) but the main issue is the Conservative party’s pledge to abolish the Human Rights act.

Forget their fascination with Europe, and that upcoming in-out referendum; what they want to do, very quickly, is abolish the formal link between British courts and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). They want a parliamentary override in place of this link; rulings could be overturned by the British government.

The party has long been frustrated by what it sees as the ECHR’s mission creep, intruding with rulings and judgements where it has no place, typically citing egregious decisions. An example would be Former Home secretary Theresa May arguing that the Human Rights Act of 1998 had to be repealed, because it allowed an illegal immigrant to stay in the UK “because he owned a pet cat”.

Now, that example is deliberate. The Royal Court of Justice’s Judicial office shortly refuted May’s claims, saying the tribunal reached their decision because the man in question was in a serious, committed relationship with a Briton, and the fact they owned a pet cat together was one piece of evidence to demonstrate that fact.

The party may be frustrated by their inability to carry out an anti-immigration and anti-terror manifesto in the face of ECHR rulings, but what’s more frustrating for them is the ideological and cultural changes taking place in the world. The Theresa May example shows exactly what the party is angered by: the general historical trend towards greater security and rights for individuals against their governments. Yes, the Conservatives have a plan to develop a “British Bill of Rights” in place of the Human Rights Act, but how this would function is unclear. The party perceives a growing culture of risk-aversion by public authorities, coupled with a growing “political correctness” that disables people from saying and doing what they “really” think, and stops them acting from “common sense”.

While the Human Rights Act does suffer occasional abuse by litigants, which law doesn’t? The nature of many legal systems is that of precedent and refinement; no law is instantly and automatically ideal. Working towards a more cohesive law should the Conservative party’s aim, not dismantling the structures that give millions of British citizens recourse to higher justice if necessary. Perhaps people think: well, if you don’t do anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear – get rid of the Act. But we should all remember, dismantling a law for another also dismantles it for ourselves: it’s not just the criminals who will lose their Human Rights.