Raab’s Bill of Rights unpicks Blair’s messy reforms

For years, the Human Rights Act has cast a shadow over British politics. Its supporters claim, in the absence of a single written document in Britain’s constitution, that it upholds key freedoms; its detractors say it has been misused and hands too much power to the courts over elected politicians. Soon, this debate may be over: Dominic Raab’s Bill of Rights kills off the Human Rights Act.

‘The Human Rights Act 1998 is repealed,’ paragraph 2 of Schedule 5, of the Act says. Under the old Human Rights system, the courts were allowed to ‘interpret’ any Act of Parliament ‘in line’ with Human Rights legislation. That was always a conceptual problem for our constitution. Why? Because making law is a political action that should be carried out in parliament.

Yet Section 3 of the HRA 1998 started to look like it allowed judges to make law themselves. We knew what the words said, but judges were sometimes encouraged to pretend they said something else in order to comply with a political policy.