Lord Chancellor attacks ‘Dark Ages’ critics of Human Rights Act
The Conservatives and others who attack the Human Rights Act want to take Britain back to the legal values of the Dark Ages, Lord Falconer said today.
The Lord Chancellor said the act was “part of what is good about this country” and attacked ‘myths’ that it allowed prisoners to demand hard-core pornography and had led to a rash of compensation claims.
However, he admitted many organisations were cutting back on their activities because of the ‘have a go’ culture the act had encouraged, and said the Government would have to fight that.
Speaking to an ippr conference in London, Lord Falconer defended the Human Rights Act as “one of the most important pieces of constitutional legislation that any government has introduced since the achievement of universal suffrage, enshrining in British law, through a framework of fundamental rights, the notion that all human beings should be treated with respect, equality and fairness”
Those who wanted to revoke it, he said, “are urging us to turn the clock back not just 50 years, but to the legal values of the Dark Ages”.
He insisted the act made a positive, practical difference to the lives of everyday people. For people with an elderly relative in a care home, the act meant local authorities could not close the home down and move the residents without properly consulting them.
Lord Falconer said he did not accept that human rights legislation favoured victims over criminals. The claim that the mass-murderer Dennis Nilson used the Human Rights Act to get hard-core pornography in his prison cell was completely untrue, he said.
“In reality, the Human Rights Act is about common sense – it does pretty much what our instincts judge to be fair and proper.”
The act did not give excessive protection to minorities such as travellers, he added.
Turning to compensation, the Lord Chancellor said the Human Rights Act had not altered the law of negligence.
The courts were not extending liability – nor were they being ‘flooded’ with new claims.
However, he admitted the ‘compensation culture’ was having an effect by making organisations moderate or curtail their activities because people thought they had new rights.
“Some claims advertising clearly encourages people to ‘have a go’ – we need to respond to this,” he said.
“But to say the Human Rights Act is the cause is dangerously wide of the mark.”
But, the Shadow Home Secretary David Daivs repeated the Conservatives promise to review the act. He said: “‘Rights’ should exist to protect the law abiding citizen but, under Labour, they are balanced far too much in favour of the criminal – the Conservatives will restore that balance.”
