| Topic: | Re:Human Rights....gone insane? | |
| Posted by: | Roy Gillett | |
| Date/Time: | 14/03/12 22:10:00 |
| Some information The Human Rights Act is nothing whatsoever to do with the European Union. It's enabling legislation that brings the treaty requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights within the purview of British courts such that EHCR cases don't have to go to the European Court of Human Rights. If the HRA was scrapped it would make no difference WHATSOEVER to the UK's obligations under the Convention. It would simply take a lot longer for cases to be settled Further, it's a tabloid myth, enthusiatically and dishonestly promulgated by various governments that the European Court of Human Rights is some alien, unBritish monstrosity imposing unwanted and unneeded arbitrary rules on our sovereign government. The Court, (staffed, incidentally by some of the most qualified judges in Europe and currently presided over by the UK representative, Sir Nicholas Bratza) adjudicates on matters pertaining to the European Convention on Human Rights. The Convention is a large set of treaties concerning individual rights and freedoms freely entered into by members of the Council of Europe--a body set up in the aftermath of WW2 specifically to provide a framework of cooperation between nation states and to prevent the rise of totalitarianism. The original Convention drew heavily on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights issued by the United Nations So when a court hands down a decision under the HRA on a matter falling within the remit of the ECHR, it is not judges in another country telling us what we can do, it's a court telling politicians what their treaty obligations are. It's telling them that they are bound by agreements made in good faith by their predecessors. And it's nothing to do with that tabloid *bete noir* the European Union |