Category Archives: Human Rights Act

Tory MPs lobby to change legislation as splits emerge over Rwanda policy

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Centrist Tories want PM to stick by UK’s human rights obligations while those on the right want new bill to override them

Tory MPs are at loggerheads as competing factions engage in last-minute lobbying efforts to try to change Rishi Sunak’s flagship Rwanda legislation before it is published in the coming days.

The prime minister is due to announce a new bill as soon as this week, which Downing Street says will deal with concerns raised last month by the supreme court over the government’s scheme to send asylum seekers to east Africa. It follows the signing of a new treaty with Rwanda on Tuesday by the home secretary, James Cleverly, in Kigali.

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Sunak risks ripping up Good Friday agreement over Rwanda, senior Tories say

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Concerns echo White House remarks that blocking human rights laws could undermine Northern Ireland peace process

Rishi Sunak risks ripping up the Northern Ireland peace process if he blocks human rights laws so the UK can deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, senior Conservatives have said.

After similar concerns from the White House on Thursday, the MPs said widely reported plans from Downing Street to disregard parts of the Human Rights Act could undermine the Good Friday agreement and damage UK-US relations.

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Rishi Sunak ‘working on new Rwanda treaty’ after deportation policy ruled unlawful – UK politics live

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Prime minister says he is prepared to ‘revisit legal frameworks’ to stop the boats as supreme court says policy is unlawful

Reed says the court has had to decide whether the Rwanda policy breaches the non-refoulement rule.

The policy is in the Home Office’s immigration rules, he says.

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Thousands of lone child asylum seekers left in limbo by Home Office, data shows

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Since 2020 more than 7,500 children in UK have waited more than a year for initial asylum decision – and 57 for more than five years

Thousands of lone child asylum seekers have been left in limbo by the Home Office without a decision on their protection claims, with dozens waiting more than five years, official data has revealed.

Home Office data shows that over the past three years more than 7,500 children who travelled alone to the UK waited more than a year for an initial decision on whether or not to accept their asylum claim.

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UK must act over poverty, housing and and equal rights, says UN body

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Human rights council makes more than 300 recommendations, with many coming from less well-off countries

The UK must tackle rising poverty, the United Nations human rights council has said in a report that includes demands from less well-off countries for the British government to act.

Amid worsening financial prospects for millions, the member states of the UN body also demanded action on housing to prevent homelessness, better food security for young children, and equal rights for people with disabilities.

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Rishi Sunak urged to scrap ‘undemocratic’ proposals to axe 2,400 laws

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Charities and trade unions among those calling on new PM to shelve bill that would scrap EU-era legislation protecting workers’ rights and the environment

Employers, trade unions, lawyers and environmentalists are calling on Rishi Sunak to scrap Jacob Rees-Mogg’s legislation that would sweep away 2,400 laws derived from the EU.

The retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill is due for its second reading in the House of Commons on Tuesday, which would scrap protections including the ban on animal testing for cosmetics, workers’ rights and environmental measures.

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Increasing public sector pay in line with inflation would be ‘reckless’, says No 10 – UK politics live

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PM’s spokesperson says workers should not be ‘chasing inflation with wages’ as that would increase inflation

Moderna has announced that it will open a vaccine research and manufacturing centre in the UK. In a visit to mark the announcement, Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said:

We all saw during the pandemic the differences that cutting edge vaccines and treatments can make and we all particularly saw that the mRNA technology has been very transformational. It has literally saved millions of lives over the last couple of years.

And that’s why I’m thrilled to announce this new partnership between the UK government and Moderna, where Moderna will established here in the UK, a global R&D facility with over £1bn for investment in this cutting edge technology, and also a huge manufacturing centre, their largest outside of the US, and so this is a great investment in the UK, and gives huge confidence to our life sciences sector already leading in Europe.

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No 10 to set out sweeping plans to override power of Europe’s human rights court

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Proposal to replace Human Rights Act with bill of rights is effort to make government ‘untouchable’, say critics

Downing Street will tomorrow set out sweeping plans to override the power of Europe’s human rights court just days after a judge in Strasbourg blocked the deportation of asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda.

The abolition of the Human Rights Act (HRA), including reducing the influence of the European court of human rights (ECHR), will be introduced before parliament in what the government described as a restatement of Britain’s sovereignty.

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Levi Bellfield: Raab says granting marriage request ‘inconceivable’

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Justice secretary says safeguarding concerns must be addressed, and criticises Human Rights Act

Granting Levi Bellfield’s request to get married in prison is “inconceivable” unless serious safeguarding concerns are addressed, Dominic Raab has said.

Bellfield, who murdered Marsha McDonnell, Amelie Delagrange and Milly Dowler, is engaged and has requested a prison wedding, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed.

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Replacing Human Rights Act will weaken protections, say peers and MPs

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Joint committee on human rights says plans contravene principle that human rights are universal

Dominic Raab’s proposal to replace the Human Rights Act with a British bill of rights is not evidence-based and will diminish protections for individuals, MPs and peers have said.

The criticisms by the joint committee on human rights (JCHR) are the latest directed at the planned changes, which the justice secretary has said will counter “wokery and political correctness” and expedite the deportation of foreign criminals.

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Amnesty hits out at Tory plans to replace Human Rights Act with bill of rights

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Justice secretary Dominic Raab’s proposals will ‘slash away’ at rights of ordinary people to challenge government, group says

Amnesty International has criticised plans by the justice secretary Dominic Raab to replace Labour’s Human Rights Act with a British bill of rights.

Raab has argued that the proposal will better protect the press in exposing wrongdoing and said he feared free speech was being “whittled away” by “wokery and political correctness”.

The deputy prime minister told the Daily Mail that under plans being drawn up, there would be only limited restrictions placed on the protections on free speech with checks to stop people abusing it to promote terrorism.

Laura Trevelyan, Amnesty’s human rights in the UK campaign manager, hit out at his plan on Saturday.

“Scrapping the Human Rights Act has long been the intention of Mr Raab and others not because they want to extend any protections, but because they want to slash away at the powers ordinary people have got to challenge the government and its decisions,” she said.

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Has Interpol become the long arm of oppressive regimes?

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Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidents

Flicking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.

“Oh, wow,” Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world’s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world’s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him.

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The woman on a mission to expose torture in Thailand’s troubled south

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Despite the risks, Anchana Heemmina wants justice for victims of the Malay Muslims’ decades-old insurgency – and for herself

Much of Anchana Heemmina’s work involves listening to stories of immeasurable pain, all part of her campaign to stop the cycle of violence that has long haunted Thailand’s troubled southern provinces.

Her work striving for human rights and to prevent torture by state authorities has put Heemmina’s life in danger.

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Home Office sued by asylum seeker over baby’s death

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Woman claims asylum housing staff ignored pleas for help when she was in pain while 35 weeks pregnant

A woman whose baby died is suing the Home Office for negligence over claims that staff at her asylum accommodation refused to call an ambulance when she was pregnant and bleeding.

The woman, who has asked to be named Adna, sought asylum in the UK in January 2020 after fleeing Angola. She was seven months pregnant when she was brought by police to Brigstock House asylum-support accommodation in Croydon.

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Shamima Begum court decision brings shame on UK | Letters

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Readers respond to the supreme court decision that Begum will not have her citizenship restored

Every day it seems the Guardian serves up another reason for being ashamed to be British. On Friday, it was the case of Shamima Begum (Shamima Begum loses fight to restore UK citizenship after supreme court ruling, 26 February). It makes it particularly difficult that I’m tutoring someone who is hoping to take an A-level in British politics. All the books list human rights and explain how carefully protected they are in our system. Article 5 is supposed to protect the right to liberty and freedom from arbitrary detention. Yet the supreme court is unable to protect Begum’s rights against a home secretary who is operating a policy based on pandering to public opinion in return for (hoped-for) votes.

We are told that legal protections are particularly important in difficult cases – that is, cases where an individual presents as unpleasant or undeserving. Begum was a teenager who took the extraordinary step of leaving her country to defend something she believed was deserving of her support. But even if she left with the firm intention of terrorising her fellow citizens, does this mean she should be deprived of her rights? It is a matter not of what Begum deserves but of what our national honour, and our constitution, deserve. This has been increasingly in doubt in recent years, with the government threatening to renege over the Northern Irish border agreement; not to mention the Chagos Islands and our participation in rendering citizens to be tortured during the “war on terror”.
Jeremy Cushing
Exeter

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Boris Johnson set for compromise on Human Rights Act – EU sources

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UK prepared to retain act in order to secure security ties with EU, sources say

Boris Johnson is prepared to make a major compromise to secure security ties with the EU by pledging in a deal on the future relationship not to rip up the Human Rights Act.

The UK is said by EU sources to be “moving” in negotiations on the issue in Brussels after previously insisting that the government would not tie its hands in any agreement on the future relationship.

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It’s time to act against the oil companies causing death and destruction | John Sentamu

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Repentance, reparation and remedy for the terrible damage done to the people of Bayelsa state in Nigeria is long overdue

• John Sentamu is the archbishop of York

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins: “All human beings … should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” It is now widely acknowledged that human rights cannot be enjoyed without a safe, clean and healthy environment. The right to a healthy environment is enshrined in more than 100 constitutions all over the world because human and environmental rights are intertwined.

However, despite the endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, oil companies exploiting irreplaceable resources in the Niger Delta are callously flouting fundamental human rights. That is the conclusion I have been forced to draw from my work as chair of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission (BSOEC).

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UN joins Clooney in decrying ‘inhuman’ Brunei anti-gay law

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Penal code that imposes death by stoning for gay sex is serious setback for rights, says commissioner

The United Nations has condemned “cruel and inhuman” laws set to take effect in Brunei this week that impose death by stoning for gay sex and adultery, and amputations for theft.

“I appeal to the government to stop the entry into force of this draconian new penal code, which would mark a serious setback for human rights protections for the people of Brunei if implemented,” the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, said in a statement.

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