header-logo header-logo

Protecting human rights

14 October 2019
Issue: 7859 / Categories: Legal News , Human rights , Brexit , EU
printer mail-detail
The Human Rights Act, which enacts the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, may come under attack again in the current ‘isolationist’ climate, Geoffrey Bindman QC has warned.

If there is another Conservative government, especially if it follows the UK’s departure from the EU, ‘we may expect it to renew plans to leave the Convention and repeal the Act,’ Bindman writes in this week’s NLJ.

‘There is no necessary connection between our adherence to the Convention and our membership of the EU but leading Conservative politicians have long disliked both, seeing human rights law, like the EU, as an encroachment on British sovereignty. The Conservative Party manifesto of 2015 commits a future Conservative government to withdraw from the Convention and repeal the Act, replacing both with a British Bill of Rights.’

Although some politicians have ‘relied on the occasional adverse Strasbourg decision to justify their criticism of what they see as foreign interference’, Bindman says the Strasbourg court’s margin of appreciation doctrine minimises disharmony by giving weight to the traditions and preferences of individual member states.   

Issue: 7859 / Categories: Legal News , Human rights , Brexit , EU
printer mail-details

MOVERS & SHAKERS

FOIL—Bridget Tatham

FOIL—Bridget Tatham

Forum of Insurance Lawyers elects president for 2026

Gibson Dunn—Robbie Sinclair

Gibson Dunn—Robbie Sinclair

Partner joinslabour and employment practice in London

Muckle LLP—Ella Johnson

Muckle LLP—Ella Johnson

Real estate dispute resolution team welcomes newly qualified solicitor

NEWS
Solicitors are installing panic buttons and thumb print scanners due to ‘systemic and rising’ intimidation including death and arson threats from clients
Ministers’ decision to scrap plans for their Labour manifesto pledge of day one protection from unfair dismissal was entirely predictable, employment lawyers have said
Paper cyber-incident plans are useless once ransomware strikes, argues Jack Morris of Epiq in NLJ this week
In this week's NLJ, Robert Hargreaves and Lily Johnston of York St John University examine the Employment Rights Bill 2024–25, which abolishes the two-year qualifying period for unfair-dismissal claims
Writing in NLJ this week, Manvir Kaur Grewal of Corker Binning analyses the collapse of R v Óg Ó hAnnaidh, where a terrorism charge failed because prosecutors lacked statutory consent. The case, she argues, highlights how procedural safeguards—time limits, consent requirements and institutional checks—define lawful state power
back-to-top-scroll