Human Rights Act: How the Government's Plans for Reform Might Affect Us
The Human Rights Act passed in 1998 as an assurance that all people in the UK would be treated with dignity, equality, respect, and fairness under all public authorities. Using this as a frame of reference, the act has been an invaluable source of protection for people in the UK at their most vulnerable, ensuring individual freedoms and their welfare. In the last few months, these rights have come under attack. The December 14th reveal of a plan to reform the Human Rights Act comes out of increasing hostility towards refugees and asylum seekers, as well as proposing questionable “freedom of speech” protections. It is encapsulated by the lofty remark to transform the bill into that of “quintessentially UK rights.” The government press release details its intention to pad the Parliament’s power with a more “common-sense approach” towards human rights. In other words, this review connotes not a strengthening of human rights but a shaving off of protections against any non-British individual.
The planned changes will slowly void the Article 8 Right to Family Life – migrant and asylum seekers’ prevailing means to fight deportation orders. While the government claims they are targeting “foreign criminals,” this amendment will irresponsibly hand them the power to enforce this on any migrant or asylum-seeker whose entrance has been deemed “illegal.” Singling what they call “foreign criminals” out as “drug dealers and terrorists,” (Press release: Plan to reform Human Rights Act) the government perpetuates failures of the criminal justice system by projecting their issues onto ‘foreignness’. This is nothing but a fear-driven fixation rooted in the Home Office’s xenophobia and an attempt to escape the responsibility of welcoming migrants. The recent criminalizing of the often-fatal migrant boat crossings, rather than actively providing aid, has only shown the government’s continued lack of regard for human rights. The changes to the act will also include the introduction of a permission stage, where “spurious” claims can be filtered out in court. This loose term will effectively prevent legitimate pleas against deportation to be heard on subjective grounds. What we are seeing is the silencing of so many people whose conditions for staying in the UK depend on these hearings.
What is also concerning is the reform proposing that public authorities need to be further protected. These authorities include the police; whom many concerns been have raised against regarding their treatment of peaceful protests. Question 21 supports giving “public authorities greater confidence to perform their functions,” (Human Rights Act Reform: A Modern Bill of Rights, 2021) which undeniably aligns with the controversial proposed Policing Bill, again attacking the right to protest. This undermines the purpose of the Human Rights Act in protecting the people; counterintuitively, the government is turning the public into a threat. What Question 21 calls “performing their functions” has often been realised as police brutality and avoiding accountability. This reform will allow for questionable subjectivity whilst handing excessive judgement to the police. Human rights-wise, this move would make it more difficult to raise human rights claims against the police and other authority bodies: another instance of silencing. The purpose of the police is to be a limited service when needed, not to impose. The call for limiting the power of the police has somehow contorted into handing them a no-consequence allowance to police migrants seeking safety in the UK, largely irrespective of the reasons they may have left their homelands.
The backers of this reform seem to have lost sight of who exactly they should be protecting. If these reforms do end up going through, it would be a significant blow to the treatment of asylum cases, as well as the nation’s stance on our freedom of speech.
Written by Allison Ko
Hello! My name is Allison and I'm currently a BA English Literature Student at the University of East Anglia. I have a passion for biscuits and like to spend my free time singing badly and obsessing over trees.
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