Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch wants to take away your human rights – because they stop her from doing whatever she wants to do – to you.

You need to understand that, whenever she turns up trumpeting that the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is stopping her from deporting illegal immigrants; that’s just her excuse.

It isn’t immigrants she’s after – it’s you.

Think about the language she uses, as quoted by the BBC in its report:

Badenoch said if the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) continued to stop the government acting in the country’s national interest, the UK would “probably have to leave” the treaty.

There’s no mention of immigrants – just of the “national interest”. And Kemi Badenoch’s idea of what constitutes the UK’s national interest is radically different from that of the rest of us (with a few far-right exceptions).

She only mentioned the issue of “illegal” migrants obliquely:

She… reiterated her position that international courts are being used by charities and other organisations “to advance an activist political agenda”.

It was the BBC that linked this with immigration:

The ECHR was established in 1950 and sets out the rights and freedoms people are entitled to in the 46 signatory countries.

The treaty is a central part of UK human rights law and has been used to halt attempts to deport migrants who are deemed to be in the UK illegally.

The treaty was also recently cited in a case that allowed a Palestinian family the right to live in the UK, after they originally applied through a scheme designed for Ukrainians.

During the Conservative leadership election, Badenoch said leaving the treaty would not be a “silver bullet” to tackling immigration but last week said her party would review the ECHR and Human Rights Act.

Tories have been trying to end your human rights for more than a decade.

This Site published an article in 2014 that lifted the lid on their plans to end the Human Rights Act and the UK’s membership of the ECHR and the European Court of Human Rights (also, confusingly, the ECHR). The plans then were as follows:

The new measure will:

•  Repeal Labour’s 1998 Human Rights Act.
•  Break the formal link between British courts and the European Court of Human Rights. In future Britain’s courts will no longer be required to take into account rulings from the Court in Strasbourg. This will make our Supreme Court the ultimate arbiter of human rights matters in the UK.
•  End the ability of the European Court to require the UK to change British laws. Every judgement against the UK will be treated as advisory and will have to be approved by Parliament if it is to lead to a change in our laws.
•  Define much more clearly when and how Human Rights laws in the UK are to be applied. This will end the ability of the Courts to decide unilaterally to apply Human Rights laws to whole new areas of public life.
•  Limit the use of Human Rights laws to the most serious cases. They will no longer apply in trivial cases (Paul Bernal’s blog has already called this into question).
•  Balance rights and responsibilities. People who do not fulfil their responsibilities in society should not be able to claim so-called “qualified rights” in their defence in a court of law.
•  Ensure that those who pose a national security risk to this country or have entered it illegally cannot rely on questionable human rights claims to prevent their deportation.

Examples of how the new law will be different include:

•  Terrorists and serious criminals who pose a significant threat to the security and safety of UK citizens would lose their right to stay here under Human Rights Laws.
•  People who commit serious crimes in the UK, and in doing so infringe upon the basic rights of others, should lose their right to claim the right to stay here under the right to family life. So for example, a foreign criminal, guilty of causing death by dangerous driving and so taking away the rights of another citizen, would not be able to claim family rights to stay in the UK (This seems odd – why would they want to? If they committed such a crime in this country, they would want to get as far away from our prisons as possible; Yr Obdt Srvt has experience of this happening – a court allowed bail to a foreign national accused of causing death by dangerous driving and he skipped out of the country, never to be seen again).
•  No one would be able to claim human rights to allow them to step outside the law that applies to all other citizens, for example a group of travellers claiming the right to family life to breach planning laws.
•  The right to family life would be much more limited in scope. For example an illegal immigrant would not be able to claim the right to family life to stay in the UK because he had fathered children here when he is playing no active part in the upbringing of those children.
•   Limit the reach of human rights cases to the UK, so that British Armed forces overseas are not subject to persistent human rights claims that undermine their ability to do their job and keep us safe.

If you think that seems reasonable, consider the following:

Looking at the comments attached to the article, one of the most telling comes from Adam Colligan, who writes: “Call me a stupid American, but if your ‘Bill of Rights’ is an act of ‘restoring Parliamentary sovereignty’, you’re doing it wrong. The whole point of codifying rights in a constitutional manner is to prevent parliamentary overreach, not to enable it. This seems to be the sad end of a decade-long process in which the Tory commitment to a British Bill of Rights has swung from a project meant to protect individual liberties — from threats in Westminster as well as Strasbourg — to one meant to strip them bare before the will of the government of the day. Isn’t it telling that zero of those ten bullet points actually consist of a positive assertion of rights?”

Basic rights, like the right to a fair trial and the right to life which are an essential part of a modern democratic society will be protected, we are told.

But there is much more to the European Convention on Human Rights – which the Human Rights Act enshrines in UK law – than that.

What about nation states’ primary duty, to “refrain from unlawful killing”, to “investigate suspicious deaths” and to “prevent foreseeable loss of life”? (Or do the Conservatives want to get rid of this in order to legalise the deaths of all those inconvenient disabled people who were ruled out of ESA by the new version of the work capability assessment they brought in?)

What about the prohibition on slavery or forced labour? (Mandatory work activity/Workfare, anybody?)

What about the prohibition of the retroactive criminalisation of acts and omissions? (We all know the answer to that – the Coalition’s retroactive Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Act runs roughshod over this human right).

What about the right to privacy? (The Surveillance Act provides our answer to that.)

What about the right to freedom of expression? If this Bill of Rights replaces the Human Rights Act, will Vox Political be banned and Yr Obdt Srvt arrested for Thought Crime?

What about the right to freedom of assembly and association? Will this mean the end of trade unions? Will it mean the end of legal political protest?

What about the prohibition of discrimination? What about the right to effective remedy for violations of these rights? Nothing is said about these.

Human rights organisation Liberty very quickly produced an infographic, explaining the implications of the Tory plan:

 

In 2016, a House of Lords committee warned that the Tory plan would hamper the fight against crime, undermine the UK’s international moral authority and could start “unravelling” the constitution. This is from The Guardian:

A critical report… urges ministers to rethink plans to scrap the Human Rights Act and highlights fears expressed by the Irish government that the policy could damage the Northern Ireland peace process.

“Were the UK to depart from the standards of human rights currently recognised within the EU,” the report states, “the system of mutual recognition which underpins EU justice and home affairs cooperation would be hampered by legal arguments over its application to the UK.

“We urge the government not to introduce domestic human rights legislation that would jeopardise the UK’s participation in this important area of EU cooperation in the fight against international crime.”

Obviously the UK is no longer a member of the EU, but the ECHR is not a part of the European Union anyway; it simply underpins laws in EU states and make co-operation possible.

The point here is that leaving the ECHR would increase crime.

None of these issues were mentioned by Kemi Badenoch because her aim is simply to remove your rights and replace them with privileges that she and the rest of the UK’s ruling class of politicians could rewrite at will – most probably while holding themselves unaccountable to the requirements they place on you.

This is not about dealing with illegal immigrants – it is about exploiting you.

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