Review of the Human Rights Act 1998

In its Election Manifesto for 2019 the Conservative Party announced that it wished to review the operation of the Human Rights Act 1998.

For a number of years, some politicians had been argung for a repeal of the act and its possible replacement with a ‘British Bill of Rights’. That idea never gained broad political support and seems to have fallen away. Certainly the announcement, on December 7 2020, of the current review states, in terms, that the Government remains committed to the European Convention on Human Rights.

According to the official announcement, the new review – chaired by retired Court of Appeal judge, Sir Peter Gross – has the following tasks. It will consider:

The relationship between the domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). This includes how the duty to ‘take into account’ of ECtHR case law has been applied in practice, and whether dialogue between our domestic courts and the ECtHR works effectively and if there is room for improvement.
The impact of the HRA on the relationship between the judiciary, executive and Parliament, and whether domestic courts are being unduly drawn into areas of policy.
The implications of the way in which the Human Rights Act applies outside the territory of the UK and whether there is a case for change.

The review is stated to be limited to looking at the structural framework of the Human Rights Act, rather than the rights themselves.

The announcement of the review also says that the new review ‘runs alongside’ the independent review of Judicial Review and ‘is part of the government’s work to deliver the commitment in the Manifesto to look at the broader aspects of the constitution and the relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts’.

It seems that these 2 reviews, taken with ‘others to be announced in due course’ will deliver the ‘Commission on Constitution, Democracy, and Rights’ which the Government said it wished to establish. It is not at all clear whether there will be a separate Commission, or whether these separate reviews will, in some way, be welded together into some kind of final statement of policy. I would have thought that a distinct Commission would be essential to ensure that the outcomes from specific reviews were coherent.

The announcement of the HRA review is at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-independent-review-of-the-human-rights-act

I noted the review of judicial review at https://martinpartington.com/2020/08/07/independent-review-of-administrative-law/. See also https://martinpartington.com/2020/11/04/collection-of-responses-to-the-independent-review-of-administrative-law-iral/