Labour’s Human Right Act of1998 – buying into the Federal Europe dream, making UK Courts subservient to the Strasbourg court.
OK I get it, that the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is a binding international agreement that the UK helped draft and has sought to comply with for over half a century. However, for many years the Convention was not a full part of our own law, so using the Convention usually meant taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg. This was often time-consuming and expensive.
Since coming into force on 2 October 2000 within the UK, the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) has made rights from the ECHR (the Convention rights) enforceable in our own courts.
However It's all very well saying the 1998 version of the act effectively recognised, and empowered victims. all too often since it has been used against the victims. namely the British people. Too often our rights have. been ignored by those who mean us harm, like the prisoners that have wronged society wanting the vote, or just the illegal immigrants looking for a lame excuse to stay and can’t be shifted.
And all get to challenge the British courts with legal Aid, paid for by the taxpayer ‘money tree’, that Labour planted and picked on an all too regular basis through 13-years in power..
And who are these people in Strasbourg, and what right do they have to micromanage laws within the UK and other member states – rather their original purpose, to fight against major human rights abuses?
Who gave them these powers, or have they taken them on themselves as business is a bit slow elsewhere – maybe as in all EU uncontrolled, virtually unaccoutable bureaucracies, they have too many jobsworths looking to justify their huge remuneration packages?
In reality the 47 Strasbourg judges have virtually no democratic legitimacy and are poorly qualified compared to Britain's own senior judges.
And similar to the Labour administration’s policies, shortcutting appeals to Strasbourg may ideologically look good on paper to them, but is not "fit for purpose" for day to day use in the REAL world..
Therefore we should now either press for reforms by all member states, or cut our ties with the court because it is, increasingly gaining influence over the UK courts by trivialising and over-extending the concept of human rights into areas where it really doesn't belong.
Whatever, the first step by a Conservative government with a majority in parliament (it currently does not have) is to repeal The Human Rights Act of 1998 to regain control back to our courts on more domestic issues, while adhering to the original aims and purposes of the ECHR on big picture Human Rights abuses, signed way back before John Wayne was a cowboy.