In the strongest signal yet that a Conservative-only Government would get rid of the Human Rights Act, Prime Minister David Cameron said this week that his party needs “to look at scrapping” the Act.
The Prime Minister also suggested that the Tories’ partners in the Coalition, the Liberal Democrats, had been blocking moves by the Conservatives to abandon the legislation.
He is supported in his stance by Home Secretary Theresa May and Justice Secretary Chris Grayling, who have both discussed abandoning the Act earlier this year.
The Human Rights Act 1998 was brought in by the then Labour Government with the aim of giving “further effect” in UK law to the rights contained in the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, commonly known as the European Convention on Human Rights.
However, critics have condemned the Act for making life too easy for criminals and Mr Grayling went so far as to say in March that he could not conceive of a situation where the Government could put forward serious reform without scrapping the Act and starting again.
He said: “we cannot go on with a situation where people who are a threat to our national security, or who come to Britain and commit serious crimes, are able to cite their human rights when they are clearly wholly unconcerned for the human rights of others.”
Meanwhile, as recently as last month, Mrs May argued that the long drawn-out and incredibly expensive extradition battles, such as the one involving radical cleric Abu Qatada, underline the fact that the Act should be scrapped.
The Conservative party proposed replacing the Act with a British Bill of Rights in their last election manifesto, but there has been no move to do so by the Coalition so far and the Prime Minister has said that his attempts at reform were “going slower” than he would like.