The government is attacking the rule of law - we are losing our legal rights

[Legit]

In the news over just the last couple of days:

"Leading immigration lawyers have told the Guardian that increasingly hostile rhetoric from the home secretary is putting them at risk of being attacked as well as undermining the legal system.
On Sunday home secretary Priti Patel used a speech at the Conservative party conference to criticise lawyers who defend migrants, linking them directly with traffickers who help asylum-seekers to cross borders.
Patel said: “No doubt those who are well-rehearsed in how to play and profit from the broken system will lecture us on their grand theories about human rights."

and:

"The prime minister today broadened his government's attack on 'lefty human rights lawyers' by publicly accusing them of hampering the criminal justice process. The Law Society said his 'divisive language' puts lawyers and their clients at risk."

and:

"Lord chancellor Robert Buckland has revealed that the government is to commission an independent review of the Human Rights Act...the government will look at the broader aspects of our constitution including the balance between the rights of individuals and effective government."

and:

The government is also reviewing the right to bring a claim for judicial review (which can challenge decisions made by public bodies).

YANBU

This is one of the reasons Brexit was pushed through - weaken human rights, employee rights, personal privacy - all things that inhibit corporate profits.

In the falling tide of human rights, it'll be the weakest that suffer most. So in order:

Children;
Disabled;
Mothers;
Women;
Foreigners;
Men.

First they came for the children ....

It's important to understand that when Johnson, Patel etc whine about lefty human rights lawyers, they mean ones who have prevented them from breaking the law.

They’re also looking at reforming judicial review to make it harder to challenge decisions of public bodies. It is a very worrying time for the rule of law. The government have shown they don’t care two hoots for it by proposing to brazenly break the law “in a very specific and limited way”. I just hope that they are too busy dealing with Covid to get much done in this parliament and that there is a sensible alternative to vote for when we next get the chance.

Ah, I didn’t read the last bit of your post as I was so annoyed and missed that you’d picked up on the JR developments

Judicial review is a way to hold governments to account if they act unlawfully. It follows that they don't like it.

The Dept of Justice has been one of the least well funded departments for a number of years.

Thats led to all sorts of problems in terms of access to justice for all. Which undermines the entire concept of justice when only the rich can afford it.

Too many people just don't realise and appreciate whats going on.

You don't just have rights as some magical substance. Even if they exist in law they are meaningless if you have no means to enforce rights and for people to be held accountable for not observing them.

Refugees are just the easy target for eroding everyone's rights too precisely because they are least able to assert their own.

yadnbu. Very worrying, particularly imo re Judicial Review, often the only way justice can be served.

Refugees are just the easy target for eroding everyone's rights too precisely because they are least able to assert their own.

Whilst the assertion that Johnson and chums want to turn everyone in the UK into a refugee with fuck all rights might seem far fetched, and lacking in proof to a standard that would convince most, it's telling that if you fast forwarded to a UK (more likely England) where such a situation existed, it's impossible to believe that Johnson , Patel et al would be unhappy bunnies at the prospect.

You are right. Not only is this convenient with them, they know it pushes all sorts of buttons with Mail, Express and Sun readers who think it's all directed at keeping pesky forrins out and cannot contemplate the possibility that one day it will affect them. But it definitely will.

@MoonJelly

You are right. Not only is this convenient with them, they know it pushes all sorts of buttons with Mail, Express and Sun readers who think it's all directed at keeping pesky forrins out and cannot contemplate the possibility that one day it will affect them. But it definitely will.

Yep.

And they've done stuff like this before. As an example, legal aid for welfare benefits was massively reduced in scope shortly before reforms to disability benefits and UC were introduced. This was not accidental.

A very worrying development.

I always get told we are the better for not (mostly) not having a written constitution. I'm never sure, but the fact that individual rights are and always have been unclear is a worry.

And people are letting them get away with it.

When losing the protections afforded to us under EU legislation was raised as a possible consequence of Brexit, we were all told it was "Project Fear".

I really hate what this country is turning into, and must get round to looking into what is involved in getting Irish citizenship (2 Irish GPs, so I think I'm entitled to it).

Yeah you will be if a grandparent was born there, you will need to formally go through the registration process though.

It's no coincidence that the government are pushing this stance as Brexit negotiations draw to a close. Since the EU is demanding that the UK remains a signatory to the ECHR to keep a level playing field. Not the Charter on Fundamental Rights, just the basic ECHR.

Unfortunately, education on such issues as the right to good administratin, the right to a fair trial and even basic FOI rights is so lacking in this country that its easy for poiticians to whip up faux outrage amongst voters about immigration.

@IncandescentSilver

It's no coincidence that the government are pushing this stance as Brexit negotiations draw to a close. Since the EU is demanding that the UK remains a signatory to the ECHR to keep a level playing field. Not the Charter on Fundamental Rights, just the basic ECHR.

Unfortunately, education on such issues as the right to good administratin, the right to a fair trial and even basic FOI rights is so lacking in this country that its easy for poiticians to whip up faux outrage amongst voters about immigration.

Has there been any suggestion we would not remain signatories to the ECHR? I am surprised the EU is apparently demanding that as it's not an EU body. Not saying I'd be surprised if this government was using the confusion to try and pretend the ECHR is an EU issue - but it really shouldn't be. Our membership considerably predates our EU membership.

DynamoKev yes of course the EU is trying to insist on it being part of the exit deal, as it makes trade much easier by levelling the playing field. Obviously the EU itself is not a member of the ECHR but that hardly matters since all member states are and membership of the greater rights within the Charter is a condition of joining. It was only a few years ago that the a conservatives were discussing reforming the human rights act, which since it is virtually the ECHR verbatim, meant removing some of thuse rights. The last white paper on Scottish independence did not commit to ECHR membership either for an independent Scotland but merely made vague references to a "Scottish version of the ECHR".

All of this is very well known amongst EU and human rights lawyers, and there was a CLR blog post about it today.

The only guarantees that Britain has given with regards to staying within the ECHR is by ministerial statement, which is open to change and hardly binding.

Has there been any suggestion we would not remain signatories to the ECHR? I am surprised the EU is apparently demanding that as it's not an EU body.

A lot of EU practices are informed by membership of the ECHR - to the extent that being a member is a prerequisite of joining the EU. The corollary being that leaving the EU allows the UK to leave the ECHR.

That said, there won't be any trade deal with the EU if the UK can't demonstrate a bare minimum protection of human rights. And anything more than a trade deal (for example the European Arrest Warrant) would require the UK be a signatory of the ECHR too.

The real reason for "examining" human rights is that there's always been an attitude in Toryland that the state comes before the individual. They've never been able to be so nakedly honest about it until now, since that's either a Fascist or Communist view, depending where you are standing. However, with the amazing stoke of "luck" that is Brexit, there's been a realignment of political extremes so that now days it's actually quite in vogue to declare oneself a fascist.

It won't be long before you'll find you can't get a job unless you are "one of us" (something women have long been used to).

My reading of the last few years has been the dogged determination of successive Tory regimes to desperately try and eliminate the homeowning constituency whilst simultaneously fooling everyone (well nearly everyone) into believing the opposite. I'm guessing the ultimate endpoint would be such a small number of property owners as to form the new elite, while the plebs are condemned to permarenting - with all the scope for injustice that allows.

A government that can spend £110 billion on Brexit could have built 1,000,000 homes in no time, if it wanted to. But it didn't.

And just to further clarify, the UK dues not have an unwritten constitution, it lacks a single written document constitution. The British constitution is contained within a number of documents from the Magna Carta to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and additional unwritten checks and balances, which mean that its technically what we term a political and legal constitution ie its open to change by ministerial statement.

You are right but the hard of thinking will cheer this on believing that ‘left human rights’ don’t impact them even though they are also human. Laws that weaken rights for one set of humans even if you don’t like them, also weaken your rights.

That is a very real worry about judicial review. It is one of the very few ways in which individuals can hold the Government to account.

@mbosnz

That is a very real worry about judicial review. It is one of the very few ways in which individuals can hold the Government to account.

But why should an elected government be subjected to the arbitrary and irrational decisions of unelected judges and courts ? That's not democracy - it's the opposition of democracy. The sooner we can reform our constitution to remove such obstacles to the will of the people the better.

Can't come soon enough.

Surely I'm not the only one who is sick and tired of criminals walking free on technicalities when it's obvious to us all they are guilty ? And you really have to question the motives of people who actually make a living from defending the guilty don't you ?

Don’t feed the obvious (regurgitating all the key bits from various Daily Mail headlines) troll. Soon as I saw ‘will of the people’ my eyes rolled so far round they ended up facing the back of my head. Too obvious.

Because the unelected (and therefore not susceptible to the same political pressures of being elected and staying elected) judges and courts, hold the political arm accountable to the rule of law. They balance each other.

Some of the biggest criminals are the elected ones - for example, handing multi-million pound contracts to their friends without putting them up for public tender.

Are you also sick and tired of people being banged up for crimes they did not commit? And do you really have to question the motives of people who make a living from ensuring all people are given due process and a fair trial? Which minimises the potential for miscarriages of justice, and also for drawn out, lengthy and expensive appeals?

You do realise that the law is there for all? You would want a lawyer to defend you, or yours, if you or yours were accused of a crime, wouldn't you, to the fullest extent of the law? Or should the accusation mean the automatic assumption of guilt? Would that be okay if your son, say, was accused of rape?