Answer to rhetorical question.Yes,Winston Churchill and another Tory politician,David Maxwell-Fyfe, were driving forces behind the drafting of the Convention.

The Act was to put directly into UK law the Convention so UK Courts could rule directly on Convention breaches without people needing to go to the Court in Strasbourg.But we were/and would be bound by the Convention regardless of the Act unless we derogated..

Link is a 2009 piece by Peter Oborne,right wing journalist, who places the Convention/Act firmly within the Conservative tradition.

[Link]

Edited by legaleagle (09 May 2015 11.16am)

But none of that relates to the Human Rights Act/European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act/Convention are nothing to do with the EU...

Interesting. Didn't know that.

My point was that The EU was not responsible for the Convention being signed up to by Britain in the first place, or its terms,or anything to do with the decisions of the Court in Strasbourg...Some people mix up EU things like the Lisbon Treaty and consequent EU directives with the Convention...

And if we left the EU,that would not affect (unless we separately derogated from it) our obligations under the Convention which run back to more than 20 years before we joined the EU.

Edited by legaleagle (09 May 2015 11.18am)

Agreed.Under Article 6, the EU shall accede to the European Convention on Human Rights (something we've been doing since 20 years before we joined the EU anyway) and that EU laws should be compatible with the Convention.

The Human Rights Act arguably allows for greater scope for interpretation of how to comply with the Convention by domestic UK judges than if we abolished the Act but didn't derogate from the Convention (the pre-Human Rights Act position).

So,if we suddenly now had human rights standards in the UK of a lower/different level to the European Convention on Human Rights,I take your point,that might be incompatible with EU membership.

So,if you want us to derogate from the European Convention on Human Rights,which of the below would you want us not to be bound by any more?

Article 2 | Right to life
Article 3 | Anti-torture and inhumane treatment
Article 4 | Anti-slavery
Article 5 | Right to liberty and security of the person
Article 6 | Right to a fair trial
Article 7 | Anti-retrospective conviction
Article 8 | Right to private and family life
Article 9 | Right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion
Article 10 | Right to freedom of expression
Article 11 | Right to freedom of assembly and association
Article 12 | Right to marriage
Article 13 | Right to an effective remedy
Article 14 | Anti-discrimination
Protocol 1 Article 1 | Right to peaceful enjoyment of property
Protocol 1 Article 3 | Duty to provide fair and free elections
Protocol 2 Article 1 | Right to education

If it's that you are anti-EU and want us out,given the Convention is separate,would you want us to derogate anyway post leaving the EU,thus changing something Churchill signed us up to more than 60 years ago?

Edited by legaleagle (09 May 2015 11.40am)

I wouldn't necessarily want to legislate differently on any of them - I merely want the UK to make its own laws. Do you really think that if we left the jurisdiction of the ECHR we would start to torture and enslave people and deny them the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion etc?

I must confess that I don't spend a great deal of time worrying about Belarus. Does anyone take any notice of 'legally binding UN conventions'? I agree, and could add to, your list of European past dictatorial governments that we are now supposed to embrace as models of democracy in an undemocratic EU. I want us to make our own laws; I want our own judges to decide issues. On the whole we have a far better history on human rights than most of our European neighbours.