ABSTRACT
The Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) does not provide the only means of protecting human rights and liberties in the UK but it is the central piece of legislation in the field. The Act has now been in force for eight years (it came into force in 2000), so it is possible to make an interim assessment as to its efficacy in protecting human rights and freedoms in the UK. It affords further effect to a number of the rights protected under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It remains a controversial piece of legislation; for example, in 2006, in a distorted and misleading fashion, parts of the media blamed it for weakening the UK in its ‘war’ against terrorism, and for the early release of criminals. The Conservative Party has stated that its policy is to repeal the Act if a Conservative government is elected at the next general election, and to replace it with a ‘British Bill of Rights’. Assuming that a Conservative government is elected and carries out this pledge to repeal the HRA, it is likely that there would be a long period of consultation before such a Bill of Rights was put in place. Assuming that eventually a Bill of Rights was enacted, it would presumably protect the Convention rights that are currently protected under the HRA, so the respect in which it would sharply differ from the HRA is currently unclear. It might be made weaker than the HRA in certain respects – eg s 3 HRA might be reproduced in the new statute but modified to discourage judges from taking a radical approach to rendering statutory provisions compatible with Convention rights through creative interpretation. In this forensic climate, it is important to examine the background to the Human Rights Act and to look carefully at what it can and cannot do. Its effects in fields ranging well beyond the criminal justice or terrorism ones may need to be considered.
