Human Rights Act will be scrapped, government confirms

[legalkhan]

Hello forum members,


http://www.theweek.co.uk/63635/human-ri ... t-confirms


How is the new bill going to effect the Immigration route/categorises coming under human rights act??

[Wanderer]

Bit of a double edge-sword this one..

Whilst I believe in fundamental human rights, there's no doubt in my mind this act and more specifically the Brussels interpretation is seriously taking the piss, as we've seen in the UK with Brussels insisting the UK gives prisoners the right to vote and defending certain crackpot clerics the right to preach hatred, resulting in long drawn out court battles defended by ECHR etc keeping these nutters in UK and not deporting them.

A British Code of Conduct to me seems sensible, rather than the tree hugging HRA view, but then again, the Tories are in charge, I trust them less.

In the end, it's bluster, noting will change just like Brexit.....

[legalkhan]

From your analysis I gathered, one edge of the sword is used to cut off the string that has currently being used by the hate preachers/criminals to dangled down and avoid being thrown away but what about the other edge??? Is it not going to be used against the already hard hit immigrants? be it a long residency or family life or even genuine asylum cases.

[helpingperson]

Legalkhan,

Thank you for sharing this link. It would be useful to knows seniors views on this in regards to immigration.

[noajthan]

This will run and run.

Changes potentially violate the Sewel convention and risk breaching the Good Friday Agreement so may be restricted to an England-only Bill of Rights.

And can it not be said that the HR Act has the right to private life, without let, fear or hindrance.

After all, the obligation on the State under Article 8 is to refrain from interfering with the right itself

[secret.simon]

The topic was covered on the World at One today (at approximately 29:20 minutes into the programme).

Firstly, the Human Rights Act incorporates the 1953 European Convention of Human Rights into UK Law. Although it has the word "European" in it, it has nothing to do with the EU. The UK was one of the founding members of the Council of Europe (which monitors the ECHR), which now has 47 countries, including such exemplars of human rights as Russia and Turkey. To the best of my knowledge, Belarus is the only European country not in the ECHR.

Indeed, ironically, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (later Lord Kilmuir), the British prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials and later a Home Secretary and Lord Chancellor, was chairperson of the Committee that drafted the document.

Unlike EU law, the ECHR could not be directly invoked in British law till the Human Rights Act in 1998. So earlier (between 1949 and 1998), the British government would have to enact each judgment of the ECHR (the European Court of Human Rights, confusingly enough) into British law by getting Parliament to pass the law individually. There was no automatic mechanism.

What the Human Rights Act did was that it incorporated an automatic mechanism for incorporating the ECHR's interpretation of human rights into UK law. Crucially, unlike EU law, it does not override UK law. If incompatible, all the courts can do is to declare it incompatible but still implement the incompatible UK law.

What the government has proposed is to replace the HRA with a British Bill of Rights (I really hope that they choose another name as we already have a Bill of Rights dated 1688, which is still current law!!! The politicians need to study their own history first). The idea (as I understand it) is that the British Bill of Rights would decouple the automatic mechanism importing ECHR interpretations into UK law and in a sense, revert to the status quo ante of before 1998.

Theresa May is on record as saying that she would like to withdraw from the ECHR (the convention) altogether, but that there is no parliamentary majority for it. I doubt the British political class is in a hurry to join Belarus in being the only European country outside the ECHR.

So, even if the Human Rights Act is scrapped, the UK will still remain a party to the ECHR, just that its judgments will not be automatically incorporated into UK law.

To the mods: Is the ILR forum the best place for this discussion? Would it make more sense in the EU Referendum forum, as it is "European" in nature, even though not related directly to the EU?

[Obie]

I will not be moving it to the EU referendum forum, as i am of the view that it is not appropriate for that section.

I will be moving it to the general discussion section.

[secret.simon]

There are a few academic discussion threads such as this one knocking about on these forums. They tend to be about broader interpretations of specific aspects of the law or of current affairs and politics and are not specific to a person/member.

The "Comments about Discussion Board" forum is plainly not the best place for them (as they do not appertain to the discussion board itself), but then neither is any other specific forum.

Can the mods consider creating an Academic Discussion forum, either in the "General" area (seems more suitable as it covers a wide field of general topics) or the "Other Forums" area (which seems to less suitable as it is more focussed on topics related to the running of the forum itself)?

I suggest that the terms for such an Academic Discussions forum be wideranging as any academic discussion would involve disputation by its very definition.

[Obie]

It may also be worth noting that the remit of this forum is immigration.

We will try and give consideration to your suggestion.

[secret.simon]

I should have clarified that the discussion in the suggested Academic discussions forum would be centered around immigration, as indeed that is the core topic of these forums.

However, the proposed forum would be a space to discuss the theoretical underpinnings, concepts and developments in the wider field of immigration and naturalisation, and the laws and politics that shape them, without necessarily being tied to the immigration situation of a specific person/member.

And thanks to all the moderators for considering the suggestion.