22nd June 2022

The new Bill of Rights Bill 2022 has been published.

On the face of it, this is a very significant move.

The Bill even tells us that when enacted it will be known as the “Bill of Rights 2022”.

Note this means it will now be one of a small group of statutes which will not be known as Blah Blah Act Date.

No, this legislation demands comparison with the (actual) Bill of Rights of 1688.

Portentous stuff.

But.

In broad terms, this new legislation makes no real difference to the Human Rights Act 1998.

For example, schedule one to the Human Rights Act 1998 sets out the articles of the European Convention of Human Rights:

And Schedule 1 to the new legislation also sets out the articles of the European Convention of Human Rights:

The proposed Bill of Rights does not create any new ‘British’ rights instead of the European Convention.

The fundamental purpose of the 1998 Act and the new bill are the same: to provide a basis in domestic law for giving effect to the convention rights in the European Convention.

And the key operative provision is the same.

Here is section 6 of the 1998 Act:

And here is clause 12 of the proposed bill:

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So.

Both the 1998 Act and the new legislation place the rights under the European Convention of Human Rights into English law by means of a schedule.

And the 1998 Act and the new legislation provide – in identical language – that public bodies must comply with those rights.

Even the defintion of “Convention rights” are the same.

The 1998 Act:

The new Bill:

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You may wonder what is the point of an entirely new enactment that does, at the fundamental level, exactly the same as the legislation it is supposed to replace?

And the answer to that is there is no real point.

The new legislation does make a difference in respect of how the convention rights can be enforced in certain situations.

The overall effect – odd for legislation which will be called ‘The Bill of Rights”, if you think about it – is to make it harder practically for convention rights to be enforced.

But that is done by the means of various processes and other tinkering – but nothing which warrants such a legislative overhaul.

Those new provisions can be looked in detail at as the bill proceeds.

But in respect of the fundamentals this new bill gives effect to the same Convention rights with the same key obligation and with the same defintion of convention rights.

The rest is detail and symbolism.

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