Human Rights Act: Are these cases trivial?

It may be worth while looking at a few recent cases under the UK Human Rights Act 1998 – now under threat from the Conservative Government. They aren’t leading cases but they raise the question of what counts as “trivial” in the mind of the Government (which wants to limit the use of Human Rights laws to the most serious cases and exclude “trivial” ones) and what principles the Government is seeking to abolish with the HRA. In particular why they wish to abolish the principle that:

“Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in [The European Convention on Human Rights] are violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.” (ECHR Art 13)

For that is what abolition of the HRA means: that individuals will receive only those human rights Parliament (in effect the Government) says they should receive; and legal barriers will be put in their way of those seeking human rights justice against the State and its offshoots. Section 6(1) of the Human Rights Act makes it illegal for a public authority, which includes a court, to act in a way which is incompatible with Convention rights. That will no longer necessarily be the case.

Daniel Gauntlett inquest: human rights issues and the ‘Middleton’ procedure

An inquest is to be held (on 10 December 2014 in Maidstone, Kent) into the death of Daniel Gauntlett who died in freezing temperatures outside a derelict bungalow in Kent. The death brought the notorious LASPO anti-squatting legislation into focus. An issue likely to be considered at the inquest is whether Gauntlett’s human rights were breached: did the state owe him a duty regarding his European Convention Article 2 right to life?

Campaigners have blamed his death on the LASPO legislation last year that banned squatting in residential buildings. They say he was barred from entering the building to protect himself from sub-zero temperatures last February [2013]. The inquest opens up the prospect of examining whether the legislation or the authorities acting under it bear any responsibility for Gauntlett’s death.

For that the inquest will have to be held under a “Middleton procedure”. Where public authorities might have been involved in a death, the procedure allows the coroner to examine whether the deceased’s right to life under Article 2 has been breached. As well as a standard finding on cause of death (by what means someone died) the coroner may in effect indicate where blame might lie by considering the circumstances of the death.

Campaigners want the coroner to look at how far Section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 might have been responsible for Gauntlett’s death outside the bungalow in Aylesford, near Maidstone. At issue might also be the behaviour of police or social services.

Repeal of the Human Rights Act – and a British Bill of Rights

Note: details of a potential “overhaul” of the Human Rights Act, clause by clause, appear below for those who prefer to get straight to the nitty gritty: “Conservative Rights and Obligations – point by point”

The 2022 Queen’s Speech has underlined the intention of the  Secretary of State for Justice, Dominic Raab, to “reform” the UK Human Rights Act with a new British “Bill of Rights” (consultation document here). 

It is likely that Raab will craft what he calls a distinctly British version of human rights that swings the legal regime subtly in favour of the executive and public bodies, albeit without seeking to withdraw from the broad obligations of the European Convention of Human Rights.

But whether the changes will be acceptable to the European Court of Human Rights is a moot point. If not, Raab will relish the fight, and will point outthat the court already accepts a “margin of appreciation” for the exercise of human rights in individual countries ie the idea that they might be affected by the history and constitutional outlooks of individual nations and hence are not homogenous across all signatories.