Britain risks sanctions from Europe over plans to water down human rights protections, to be unveiled by Boris Johnson on Tuesday, an expert on EU law has warned.
An assault on the Human Rights Act is at the heart of a Queen’s Speech billed by the prime minister as a chance for the post-Brexit UK to shake off the fetters of EU regulation and strike out on its own in areas ranging from animal welfare to gene-editing and financial services.
But experts warn that replacing the Act – which embeds the European Convention on Human Rights in UK law – with a British Bill of Rights will have a devastating impact on the country’s influence internationally.
And they say it will force hundreds of Britons each year to take their cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), as they did before the HRA’s introduction in 1998, raising the prospect of repeated fines for the UK government from the Strasbourg judges.
“It perpetuates the sense that the UK is arrogant and wants to go down its own individualistic track,” the chair of the Law Society’s human rights committee Sue Willman told The Independent.
“In theory, a British Bill of Rights could be an opportunity to introduce new additional rights, such as the right to a healthy environment which is currently being debated by the Council of Europe.
“But there aren’t any proposals for additional rights in the proposals, just plans to erode the rights we already have.
“It will detract from our role as a perceived leader of international human rights, rule of law and democracy. We will end up with a dwindling international role by going off on our own course.”
Tuesday’s bill is expected to remove the requirement for UK courts to follow decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights, a move described as “serious” by Cambridge University professor of EU law Catherine Barnard.
Future UK commitment to the ECHR was “locked in” as part of the post-Brexit trade and cooperation deal with the EU in 2020, in what was seen at the time as a victory for Brussels.
“If the bill goes as far as has been trailed…. It shows serious non-commitment to our obligations under that particular treaty,” said Professor Barnard, the deputy director of the UK in a Changing Europe (UKCE) think tank.
The UK would not have to pull out of the ECHR – an option floated, but ruled out by justice secretary Dominic Raab – to risk retaliation, she told a UKCE event.
Security elements of the 2020 deal can be terminated almost immediately if the UK rejects the ECHR, or suspended if it doesn’t sufficiently protect fundamental rights or the rule of law.
Meanwhile, Liberty director Martha Spurrier warned of unpredictable consequences for many more international treaties and agreements which have compliance with convention rights written into their texts.
“There are all sorts of ramifications if you start to row back on rights protections,” the head of the human rights campaign group told The Independent.
“If the UK government reneges on the Human Rights Act, that’s a breach of the Good Friday Agreement. The devolution aspect will be very complex, because Scotland and Wales are moving in the direction of incorporating more rights, not fewer. Convention protections are inked into many trade treaties because countries demand equivalence on rights standards.”
Campaigners have warned the overhaul of the HRA is far more draconian than expected – accusing Mr Raab of a smokescreen in claiming he wants to protect free speech from “wokery and political correctness” and to enable the deportation of foreign criminals.
Injustices such as the Hillsborough tragedy and the failure to investigate “black cab rapist” John Worboys may have never been exposed if the curbs were already in place, they say.
The crackdown will also block attempts to enforce human rights even before they reach a courtroom, despite “terrible abuses” being revealed only once a legal case starts.
And the plans for past “conduct” to be taken into account when claims are brought for rights violations will hit ethnic minority groups, Liberty protested.
Ms Spurrier said that the scale of the planned removal of rights “cannot be overstated”, warning it will create a “tiered” system where human rights are not universal but dependent on individual circumstances.
“Making rights conditional on good behaviour is toxic,” she said. “People who the state deems to have behaved badly are precisely those people who are likely to be treated badly by the state, whether they are prisoners or protestors or people without citizenship.
“It creates a kind of impunity and it erodes the idea that rights are universal. For migrants in particular, rights become conditional on citizenship.”
She pointed to measures which would leave courts “powerless” to rule that secondary legislation –often introduced by ministers with minimal parliamentary scrutiny in response to emergencies like the Covid pandemic or a terror attack – is in breach of human rights obligations.
“You can’t do the ‘global Britain’ spiel about democracy and the rule of law if at home you are removing basic human rights protections,” she warned.
Meanwhile, a group of 30 children’s charities wrote to Mr Raab urging him to ditch his plans, which the director of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England (CRAE), Louise King, said will “significantly weaken respect for children’s human rights and the ability of children to hold the UK government and public bodies to account where rights have been infringed”.
Also expected to feature in Tuesday’s speech, setting out the government’s legislative agenda for the coming year, are seven Brexit bills, designed to remove hundreds of pieces of EU law from the statute book.
New legislation is expected to allow local authorities to double council tax on second homes which are not rented out and to seize unused shops in the high street.
An Education Bill will support home-schooling. A Levelling Up Bill will encourage investment in underdeveloped areas of the UK. And a Veterans Bill is expected to grant an amnesty for Troubles-era crimes in return for cooperation with inquiries into unsolved murders.
