How Human Rights Law Helps All Sorts Of People Get Justice | HuffPost

Meet The People Human Rights Law Really Helps

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Assistant News Editor, HuffPost UK

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This article was first published on May 20, 2015. It was republished on May 27, after it was revealed the Tories had postponed plans to abolish the Human Rights Act

As they press ahead with plans to abolish Britain's Human Rights Act, the Conservatives have sought to depict its main beneficiaries as villains.

In its much-derided document outlining its plans to abolish the HRA, the party hinted that the current arrangement could see prisoners granted the right to vote over the government's objections and said the HRA empowered "foreign nationals who have committed very serious crimes... to justify remaining in the UK."

Home Secretary Theresa May told her party's 2011 conference: "We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act. The violent drug dealer who cannot be sent home because his daughter – for whom he pays no maintenance – lives here.

"The robber who cannot be removed because he has a girlfriend. The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because... he has a pet cat."

The HRA itself does not give us its rights, including to the one to "family life" May was so frustrated by.

They come from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), written and ratified in the 1950s, whose guarantees to certain rights the HRA introduced to British courts.

After the prolonged fight to deport Abu Qatada, May said withdrawing from the ECHR altogether should be an option.

In their document published last year, the Tories said they would have "no alternative" but to withdraw from the ECHR if the Council of Europe refused to recognise any new Bill of Rights as legitimate.

But anyone who thinks abolishing the HRA and withdrawing from the ECHR would only mean prisoners could not vote and foreign-born criminals would be easier to deport is wrong.

Here are some of the groups of people who won fights for justice thanks to the ECHR, either by going to court in Strasbourg or, thanks to the HRA, in Britain.

These Are The People Human Rights Law Really Helps

Families Of Missing People (01 of07)

The "right to family life" has become the villain of the HRA for how it complicates deporting those born abroad when convicted of crimes here.
But this part of became crucial in the ongoing hunt for Ben Needham, who disappeared in 1991 when he was just 21 months old.
Barrister Ian Brownhill, who has acted for the Needham family (Pictured left, Christine Needham, Ben's grandmother, and right, his mother Kerry Needham), the mother of Ben Needham for free, told HuffPost UK that this right granted by the act was "essential" in his advocacy.
He wrote to the Home Office asking why it had taken 10 months to reply to a funding request from South Yorkshire Police, after which it gave the force £700,000 to pay for English detectives to travel to Greece to continue the search.
Brownhill said: "'In over 20 years since Ben Needham went missing the family never had a lawyer. They had no idea what Ben's rights or theirs' were. Last year I volunteered to help fill that gap.
"The Needhams' right to a family life has been part of the successful campaign to persuade the government to fund a new investigation into Ben's disappearance. It's an honour and a pleasure as a lawyer to help the Needhams' understand and exercise their human rights." (credit:Amy Murphy/PA Wire)

Rape Victims Failed By The Police(02 of07)

Two victims of cab driver rapist John Worboys (pictured) received damages after winning their claim that the Metropolitan Police breached their human rights when it botched an investigation that left him free to keep attacking.
The women argued, and The High Court agreed, that the forces' repeated failings to catch him breached their article 3 right to be spared inhuman or degrading treatment.
Mr Justice Green said one of the women would not have been raped but for "myriad failings in the investigative process".
Worboys, who was jailed in 2009, is believed to have attacked more than 100 women. (credit:Metropolitan Police/PA Archive)

Gay People Kicked Out Of The Military(03 of07)

Four people brought a case that ended the military's ban on gay people serving that forced them to leave the armed forces.
(Pictured left to right) Duncan Lustig-Prean, Jeannette Smith, Graeme Grady and John Beckett said the ban breached their right to privacy - granted under the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court on Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled in their favour in September 1999.
Three months after the judgment, the ban on gay people in the military was lifted. Then-defence secretary Geoff Hoon told the Commons sexuality was "essentially a private matter for the individual". (credit:WILLIAMS JUSTIN WILLIAMS/PA Archive)

Victims Of Human Trafficking(04 of07)

A Tanzanian woman was "tricked" into coming to the UK in 2006 by the woman she worked for. She ended up being forced to work long hours for her parents as an unpaid domestic servant. She was fed only stale food, forced to sleep on a matress on the kitchen floor and only allowed out to attend church on Sundays.
She fled their home - only to be forced to work in another home and fell very ill, developing a major breathing problem that would require lung surgery and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
In 2010, the Home Office ordered she be sent back to Tanzania. Using the ECHR's ban on "forced labour", her lawyer successfully argued the British state owed her reparation - time to recover from the ordeal - for its failure to protect her from being trafficked into and then within the UK.
A tribunal held that, in light of this, demanding she leave the UK, where she was being treated, would be "unreasonable". (credit:Scott Barbour via Getty Images)

The Grieving Families Of Dead Soldiers(05 of07)

A new inquest into the death of a soldier at Deepcut barracks was ordered after a threat of litigation under the Human Rights Act by civil rights campaigners Liberty.
Private Cheryl James was one of four soldiers to be found dead from gunshot wounds at the Surrey barracks. The original inquest in 1995 lasted only an hour and failed to speak to key witnesses or review important evidence, Liberty claimed.
Last year, a new inquest was ordered. Lawyers for the family had obtained 44 volumes of statements, documents, notes and photographs after threatening litigation under the Human Rights Act.
Her parents Doreen and Des James (pictured 1st and 2nd from the left) said: "Something went dreadfully wrong at Deepcut yet until now no one has bothered to look at how and why our daughter died. We can only hope that Cheryl's legacy helps change the current ineffective and discredited military justice system.”
The new inquest will look whether a third party was involved in her death and what happened on the evening before she died. (credit:Dominic Lipinski/PA Archive)

Disabled People(06 of07)

The Supreme Court found that three people had been deprived of their liberty by virtue of the restrictions imposed upon them by authorities caring for them.
Two sisters, who both had learning difficulties, and a man born with cerebral palsy were living in a foster home, a residential home and a social services-arranged accommodation respectively - under close supervision to support them. One of the sisters was sometimes physically restrained when she was not co-operative.
Lower courts ruled the trio's treatment did not amount to a deprivation of liberty, which meant the living arrangements need not be subject to independent checks to ensure it was still in their best interests.
The Supreme Court noted that the European Court of Human Rights had made it clear it was "important not to confuse the question of the benevolent justification for the care arrangements with the concept of deprivation of liberty. Human rights have a universal character and physical liberty is the same foreveryone, regardless of their disabilities."
(credit:Martin Barraud via Getty Images)

Children(07 of07)

A nine-year-old boy (not pictured) was repeatedly beaten by his stepfather with a cane. The case went to trial with the man accused of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. A doctor had examined the boy and found him covered in bruises.
The judge told the jury: "This case is not about whether you should punish a very difficult boy. It is about whether what was done here was reasonable or not and you must judge that." They acquitted the stepfather.
The case reached the European Court on Human Rights in 1998 (again, this was before the HRA made going to British court an option). It found the law, which allowed parents to hit their children provided it was "reasonable chastisement", had failed to protect the child and breached his right to not suffer inhumane treatment.
In 2004, parliament changed the "reasonable chastisement" defence so that it did not apply in such serious assaults. (credit:Shutterstock / luxorphoto)

SEE ALSO:Human Rights Act Proposals Leave Dominic Grieve, Ex-Attorney General, Rather Underwhelmed
Human Rights Act Is 'Getting Justice' For The Parents Of Soliders Who Died At Deepcut Barracks

10 Worrying Things About The Tories' Human Rights Proposals

The proposals says that the ECHR banned whole-life tariffs for prisoners, but they didn't(01 of10)

Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, called it a "howler" based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Strasbourg ruling, and that UK sentencing laws had been found to be "totally compatible". Adam Wagner, human rights barrister from 1 Crown Office Row, called it a "major factual error". (credit:Fiona Hanson/PA Archive)

It's very unlikely the UK could be granted special status to have the Strasbourg court as a mere 'advisory' body(02 of10)

In practice, these proposals pretty much mean leaving the European Convention of Human Rights, lawyers say, leaving us in the company of Belarus and Kazakhstan. Russia, Azerbaijahn and Ukraine are just some of the countries that would have more watertight human rights protection than the UK. (credit:Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

If we want special treatment from the ECHR, then won't other countries want it too?(03 of10)

Legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg points out that "if Westminster has a veto on Strasbourg’s decisions, the parliaments of Russia, Ukraine and other countries will want one too, making compliance with court rulings voluntary would undermine the entire convention system." (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)

The proposals "limit the use of human rights laws to the most serious cases...ensuring UK courts strike out trivial cases."(04 of10)

There doesn't seem to be any real clarification about what that will mean, leaving judges scratching their heads. (credit:peterspiro via Getty Images)

One of the proposals actually means we are more tightly legally bound to the Strasbourg court than we are already(05 of10)

The document says "every judgement that UK law is incompatible with the Convention will be treated as advisory and we will introduce a new Parliamentary procedure to formally consider the judgement. It will only be binding in UK law if Parliament agrees that it should be enacted as such." Carl Gardner points out in his Head of Legal blog that "this proposal puts more human rights obligations on Parliament than it has under the Human Rights Act. There is currently no legal duty on Parliament to consider any Strasbourg judgment. The Conservatives plan would oblige it to for the very first time." (credit:Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Grayling has forgotten to mention how this would work under the Good Friday agreement with Northern Ireland or with Scottish devolution(06 of10)

It is a requirement under the Good Friday agreement that ultimately people in NI can take cases to the ECHR. Chris Grayling has just written a paper which makes no reference to this issue or how it can be solved, except saying 'We will work with the devolved administrations and legislatures as necessary to make sure there is an effective new settlement across the UK'. Westminster could change the law for both countries, but there's been no consultation and no reference to it in this paper, and it's likely Scotland would seek to devolve it. If Scotland or NI want to stay linked to the ECHR, then we could end up with a "patchwork" of different human rights laws across the United Kingdom. (credit:Dorling Kindersley via Getty Images)

British judges are now likely to find more UK legislation is incompatible with human rights, not fewer(07 of10)

The new proposals say the Tories will "prevent our laws from being effectively re-written through ‘interpretation’ of Strasborg case law."
"I don’t think this has been thought through," Gardner writes on Head of Legal. "If judges think old housing legislation discriminates against a gay tenant, they can rule that it is no longer to be read as permitting the discrimination.
"But if that option is barred, they will in case like that have no option but to declare the legislation incompatible with human rights in principle.
The result, surely, will be more headlines about judges condemning Parliament for breaching human rights, not fewer." (credit:Lewis Whyld/PA Archive)

The proposals mean we don't have to worry as much about sending people off to be tortured(08 of10)

The “real risk” test used to determine whether someone is at risk of torture on deportation will be "revised..in line with our commitment to prevent torture and in keeping with the approach taken by other developed nations”. "If there is evidence that an individual faces a real risk of torture on return, should the UK seriously be seeking shortcuts?" asks Angela Patrick is the Director of Human Rights Policy at JUSTICE. (credit:Cristian Baitg via Getty Images)

It would take an enormous amount of time, effort and consultation to end up with basically the same thing we have already(09 of10)

No one thinks we should scrap laws against, say, slavery, or free speech, or the right to protest. So the new "Bill of Rights" would be 99% a carbon copy of what we already have, only enforced by British judges, several legal commentators have pointed out. Unless we scrap human rights altogether. (credit:Peter Macdiarmid via Getty Images)

The proposal doesn't even spell "judgment" in the correct legal way(10 of10)

Gardner points out that this means the proposal probably wasn't drafted by lawyers, at least in parts.

A good point from @carlgardner - the (non-legal) spelling of "judgement" for "judgment" is a tell - Tory document not drafted by a lawyer.
— Jack of Kent (@JackofKent) October 3, 2014

(credit:JGI/Jamie Grill via Getty Images)

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