The Attorney General and human rights

On Wednesday, the Attorney General, Suella Braverman QC, made a speech at a meeting of the Policy Exchange on the subject of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the ECHR. She does not like what she sees:

“The new sector called Equality, Diversity and Inclusion is a by-product of the rights culture born out of the Convention and the Human Rights Act, combined with misinterpretations of the Equality Act.

Often with vastly inflated salaries and armed with a Newspeak dictionary, they have created mighty citadels of grievance across the public sector and made huge inroads into the private sector.

Equality laws have been misconstrued and weaponised to fight those who challenge their views as perpetrators of hate speech, calling for them to be swiftly no-platformed or cancelled. There are now many concerning examples of how inclusion has trumped fairness.”

She is particularly critical of the “living instrument” approach to applying Convention rights, heightened because

“the Strasbourg bench of judges is composed by justices from continental legal systems. Continue reading →