Gove to be new Justice Secretary

[Icimoi]

Seriously depressing news, after the dreadful mess he made of education. And richly ironic in light of his history of home flipping.

I have to say as a teacher I'm delighted that he isn't coming back to the DfE as I had feared that he would be back to finish his crusade.

On the other hand I am concerned of the damage he could do as Justice Secretary. If we end up leaving the EU and their pesky human rights laws he might bring back hanging! (only half-joking)

Oh dear God as if it wasn't bad enough already.

Ditto. Also pleased that he's not got Education, but yes that's effectively good-bye Human Rights Act.

ask all the people who voted for them

Do we know who's got Education? Is it still Nicky Morgan?

Oh Christ. I thought it couldn't get any worse than Grayling.

Yes, apparently Nicky Morgan stays at Education

For clarity, the Conservative manifesto says they will scrap the HRA and introduce a British Bill of Rights. The idea is to make the Supreme Court the ultimate deciding body on human rights in the UK. I suspect that whether or not you think this is a good idea depends on whether you think it should be easier to deport suspected terrorists and, indeed, whether prisoners should have the vote.

Having recourse to a judicial system that is separate from the old boys' network that is the British legal system is a very appealing aspect of the HRA for me.

I don't see our legal system as an old boys' network. It certainly doesn't always produce the results that the establishment might want. But I understand your position. The contrary view (which is not necessarily my view) would be that we don't want an activist European court interfering in UK affairs and telling the government what to do. The ruling on prisoner votes is a classic example of a case where the ECHR is making a ruling that goes against the views of parliament.

The prisoner vote issue has been seriously misrepresented, with the tabloids getting hysterical about murderers and rapists getting the vote event though they know perfectly well that would never happen. In essence the ruling simply calls for a properly considered policy as opposed to a blanket one, and it makes some sense. If someone was sentenced to prison for, say, three months and was due to come out today, they will have had no say in who governs for the next five years even though, fairly obviously, they can expect to be closely affected by what government does for that period. It makes sense for Parliament at least to have to consider giving people with short sentences the vote.

I agree. However, the point that some would make is that Parliament did consider the position in 2011 and voted overwhelmingly to maintain the current ban.

Repealing the HRA would not mean that Human Rights cases could not be heard in the ECHR though. We would still be bound by the European convention on human rights without the HRA wouldn't we?if not then this is far scarier than I thought.

Cases could still go to the European Court of Human Rights as they did pre-1998. There's an enormous log jam of cases there (not surprisingly when countries such as Russia and Turkey have signed up to the ECHR) so it would take a long time to get a case to court whereas at the moment, there is the possibility of redress through the courts in the UK.
What is also worrying is the massive reduction in funding for judicial review cases, which would mean that it would be difficult, without funds or help from organisations such as Liberty or the Bar Pro Bono Unit to get a case into the UK courts. Grayling disliked the whole concept of judicial review of administrative decisions - we shall have to see what Gove thinks.

That is bloody terrifying! It's clearly just an attempt to make justice so difficult to access that it's not worth the bother! I find it deeply worrying that the right wing press are trying to sell this to people as some sort of victory for the common man.

Every time I think of him being given any position of power I wonder if it's because he knows where the bodies are buried.

Most men don't prh47bridge. That's exactly the point.

It's not as if the human rights act is just going to be repealed it will be replaced by a British bill of rights. Why not wait and see what's proposed before complaining about what you think might happen.