Conservatives promise end to "spurious" human rights claims

Monday, 23 August 2004 12:00 AM

The Conservatives have said they will be setting up a new commission to examined the "spurious" human rights and the "compensation culture" allegedly spawned by the Human Rights Act.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the commission would look at whether the Act is hindering police in cracking down on terrorists and asylum-seekers, and would consider whether it needs to be reformed, replaced or repealed.

The members of the commission will be announced in October and expected to produce a report before the next election. Mr Davis added that he had already selected an "eminent and authoritative" chair.

Speaking at a press conference this morning, Mr Davis said: "The Human Rights Act has spawned too many spurious rights. It has fuelled a compensation culture out of all sense and proportion. And all too often, it seems to give criminals more rights than the victims of crime."

He cited the case of convicted murdered Dennis Nilsen, who had successfully claimed that the Act guaranteed his right to have hard-core pornography sent to him in prison. He also mentioned a case in which hundreds of travellers settled near a small village in Cambridgeshire, and then defended their actions on the basis of their right to respect for family life and the home.

Mr Davis said the "rights culture" was taking Britain in the wrong direction.

"Our aim is to rebalance the rights culture. To find a way of defending real human rights, but reversing the accelerating slide into a rights culture, and its damaging consequences for Britain."

And he attacked the act for failing to protect "real" human rights such as trial by jury, which he said had been upheld by British common law and other institutions such as the House of Lords.

To address what Mr Davis called "a seriously malfunctioning Act of Parliament", the commission will consider three main points.

First, whether UK law needs to be amended to protect the community from crime and terrorism, while maintaining civil liberties. Second, what effect the growing volume of "rights" claims is having on the criminal justice system and common law. And third, whether the act is preventing a "firm and fair" asylum policy by limiting the Government's ability to deport failed asylum seekers.

Mr Davis said the Conservatives had no intention of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, which the Human Rights Acts incorporates, but might make greater use of their power of derogation.

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